IP'' 


ii;i;!.i  '' 


I'A'i 


h'i 


■iiiil'i.Ml' 

'j'llij    'i;|!     I    it., 

i:  hi  ,  I  Mi  :^''  \W 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  "C.  R.  B. 


German  thefts  of  factory  equipment  in  northern  France. 
Boiler-rcx>m  in  a  factory  at  Chiry-Ourscamp,  Olse. 


THE 
SOUL  OF  THE  "C.  R.  B." 

A  FRENCH  VIEW  OF  THE  HOOVER 
RELIEF  WORK 


BY 

MADAME  SAINT-RENfi  TAILLANDIER 


TRANSLATED   BY 

MARY  CADWALADER  JONES 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1919 


i'' 


CormioHT,  X9i9t  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  August,  19 19 


•  •     •  •.  •  «     • 
•      •  •*  •     •  • 


•  •    •  • 
...  •   •, 

•     •  •  • 


LETTER  PREFACE 

TO  MR.  HOOVER  AND  THE  DIRECTORS  AND 
DELEGATES  OF  THE  COMMISSION  FOR  RE- 
LIEF IN  BELGIUM  AND  NORTHERN  FRANCE 

My  DEAR  Friends: 

This  little  book  may  perhaps  surprise  you. 
It  is  a  true  story,  and  accurate  concerning 
your  work,  but  in  regard  to  your  personalities 
I  have  allowed  myself  some  freedom.  Will  you 
bear  me  malice  if,  in  order  to  show  the  whole 
scope  of  your  attainment,  and  to  make  it 
stand  out  clearly  to  our  own  people,  I  have 
simplified  some  of  the  details  .? 

These  details  were  your  own  selves,  with 
your  names,  all  of  them.  How  much  I  should 
have  cared  to  have  known  each  of  you,  to 
have  been  able  to  distinguish  between  you, 
and  not,  therefore,  to  attribute  to  one  what 
was  perhaps,  in  fact,  done  by  another — ^but 
what  is  most  deeply  impressed  upon  my  mind 
was  that  you  had  but  one  heart,  one  brain, 
one  leader.  You  offered  yourselves  in  a  body 
to  starving  Belgium  and  France,  and  no  sooner 


^  1 1 


vi  DEDICATION 


were  you  freed  from  that  task  than  you  threw 
yourselves  into  other  work,  under  your  own 
flag  of  the  stars,  without  giving  us  a  chance  to 
meet  you  and  to  clasp  your  hands. 

Do  not  be  hard  on  this  little  book,  because 
it  is  you  who  have  written  it;  it  is  made  up 
from  your  own  official  reports  and  your  own 
narratives,  added  to  the  personal  recollections 
which  some  of  you  have  given  me.  Hunt  will 
see  that  I  have  read  closely  his  striking  book 
"War  Bread,''  and  I  have  also  studied  the 
"Head-Quarters  Nights"  of  Mr.  Vernon  Kel- 
logg, and  Mrs.  Kellogg's  "Women  in  Bel- 
gium." I  have  taken  my  facts  from  you,  and 
sometimes  also  my  ideas.  Si  quid  boni  tuum, 
I  have  given,  if  not  every  root  and  branch,  at 
least  the  sad  and  wonderful  flower  of  your 
work,  and  from  the  perfume  of  goodness  and 
of  pity  which  it  breathes  my  French  readers 
will  know  the  stem  on  which  it  grew. 

In  speaking  of  you,  workers  of  the  begin- 
ning, I  must  do  so  in  the  same  modest  tone  in 
which  you  speak  of  yourselves.  It  always 
touched  us  when  you  tried  to  avoid  our  thanks 
and  when  you  told  us  how  well  the  Belgians 
and  the  French  in  the  invaded  districts  had 
seconded  you,  and  how  during  their  frightful 


DEDICATION  vii 


ordeal  they  had  proved  the  truth  of  the 
proverb  "Help  thyself,  and  heaven  will  help 
thee."  My  dear  friends,  I  seem  to  hear  you 
repeating,  by  our  stricken  hearths,  whose  de- 
struction was  written  long  beforehand  by  Ger- 
many in  the  Book  of  Destiny,  the  saying  of 
one  of  our  old  French  masters  of  the  art  of 
surgery.  When  his  patient  was  cured  he  said 
with  the  modesty  of  a  true  Christian:  "I 
dressed  his  wound — God  healed  him." 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

An  Evening  with  the  C.  R.  B i 

April,  191 7 — A  Franco-American  drawing-room — Comments 
on  the  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the  war — Moving 
pictures  of  the  war. 

The  American  delegates  to  the  Commission  for  Relief  in 
Belgium. 

A  delegate's  story — His  crossing — Eight  hundred  Germans 
on  board  captured  by  a  French  patrol  boat. 

Berlin  in  the  first  days  of  the  war — German  theories — Old 
grievances — The  ideal  of  domination. 

Last  days  at  Antwerp — ^The  refugees — Impressive  entry  of 
the  German  armies — ^The  strength  in  numbers  of  the  Ger- 
mans— Spiritual  strength  of  Belgium  and  France — The  art 
of  Flanders — ^The  soul  of  Flanders — Belgium,  a  bending 
yet  resisting  reed  during  the  war. 

Testimony  of  French  writers  as  to  German  thought — Mur- 
derous idealism — National  pantheism — Germany  deifies 
and  worships  herself. 

To  this  destructive  doctrine  the  United  States  opposes  her 
ideal  of  justice. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Americans  in  the  First  Days  of  the  War  78 

Their  impressions  of  Paris — Evening  scene — September  8  at 
Notre  Dame. 

History  of  the  Relief  Commission — Scarcity  of  food  in  Bel- 
gium and  France — First  appeal  to  London — Mr.  Hoover — 
Formation  of  the  commission — Propaganda — Installation 
of  the  American  delegates  in  Belgium  and  France — Their 
relations  with  the  Belgians,  the  French,  and  the  Germans 
— Discussion  as  to  the  method  of  relief. 

Life  of  the  American  delegates  in  the  invaded  districts — 
Forced  labor — Deportations — **  Punitive  measures.** 

Last  interviews  between  German  officers  and  American  del- 
egates— ^The  United  States  declares  war. 

The  American  delegates  leave  the  invaded  districts. 

CHAPTER  III 

With  Our  Friends  in  the  Liberated  Country  170 

Mr.  Hoover  visits  Noyon  after  the  German  retreat  in  191 7 — 
Journey  to  Senlis — Memories  of  the  German  occupation — 
The  death  of  M.  Odent — Breakfast  at  Noyon — ^The  mayors 
of  the  liberated  communes  thank  the  committee  for  sav- 
ing the  people  of  the  invaded  districts  from  famine — Visit 
to  the  liberated  communes — Destruction  of  trees — Ruined 
landscapes — How  the  Germans  fell  back — Carrying  off  of 
the  last  men  able  to  work,  and  of  women  and  young  girls. 


CONTENTS  xi 


The  battering-ram — Systematic  destruction  of  villages — Old 
Eustache's  story. 

The  cemetery — ^Thoughts  on  the  dead — Visit  to  the  ruined 
chateau  of  B. — Impressions  of  the  Americans — ^They  recall 
their  faith  in  justice,  liberty,  and  peace,  and  oppose  it  to 
the  idea  of  domination  by  force — How  principles  so  differ- 
ent grew  in  two  great  nations,  and  necessarily  came  to  an 
issue — Return  to  Noyon — Night  in  the  forest  of  Ourscamp. 

Mr.  Hoover  goes  back  to  the  United  States  to  take  charge 
of  the  apportionment  of  food — Farewells  at  Havre — Mr. 
Hoover  announces  speedy  and  powerful  aid  from  America. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


German    thefts    of    factory    equipment    in    northern 

France Frontispiece 

FACING   PAGE 

Herbert  Hoover,  President  of  the  C.  R.  B 44 

Distribution  of  rations   to  the  civil   population   in   a 

town  of  devastated  France 88 

Steamship  South  Point  in  the  North  Sea,  February  27, 

1915 no 

Trees  cut  down  by  the  Germans  at  a  crossroads  at 

Champien,  Oise 154 

Pines  cut  down  by  the  Germans  in  the  park  of  the 

chateau  of  Pont-Saint-Mard,  Aisne 174 

Battering-ram   for   knocking   in   the  walls   of  houses, 

found  at  Margnies-les-Cerises,  Oise 198 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B, 

CHAPTER  I 
AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B. 

THE    CONFESSION   OF  AN    EX-NEUTRAL 


I 


T  was  two  years  ago — ^let  us  go  back  in 
order  to  be  sure  of  our  starting-point,  and 
be  able  to  judge  how  much  we  have  accom- 
pHshed — ^yes,  it  was  two  years  ago,  in  April, 
1917.  That  spring  of  1917  weighed  heavily 
on  French  hearts.  From  its  outset  the  char- 
acter of  the  Russian  revolution  showed  clearly 
that  we  had  nothing  to  expect  from  it  but 
disaster,  and  we  were  still  in  suspense  as  to 
the  final  decision  of  the  United  States. 

For  the  third  time  Spring,  as  she  passed 
over  the  fields  of  France,  felt  her  wings 
weighted  down  by  blood. 

But  one  evening,  in  the  pretty  blue-and- 

gold  drawing-room  of  our  American  friend, 

Mrs.  Felder,  the  tension  was  relaxed;  we  hela 

out  our  hands  to  each  other  cordially  and 

1 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 


there  was  gladness  in  all  our  eyes — the  United 
States  had  finally  decided  to  go  into  the  war. 

There  were  about  thirty  of  us  there,  Ameri- 
cans and  French;  yesterday  friends  and  to- 
day allies.  These  Thursday  teas  of  Mrs.  Feld- 
er's  were  a  meeting-ground  for  some  French 
men  and  women  who  knew  America,  and 
some  Americans  who  knew  and  loved  France. 
Writers,  journalists,  lecturers,  professors,  sent 
from  one  shore  of  the  Atlantic  to  the  other, 
charitable  women,  apostles  of  American  gen- 
erosity, found  there  an  opportunity  to  ex- 
press themselves  and  to  reach  each  other. 

Why  were  we  all  at  war  ?  What  had  caused 
it  ?  How  had  France,  occupied  with  social 
and  labor  problems,  and  fairly  fermenting 
with  pacifism,  been  able  to  spring  to  her  feet, 
all  differences  forgotten,  and  face  her  foe.^^ 
Why  had  the  United  States  been  merely  ob- 
servant for  so  long,  watching  and  judging  the 
blows  as  they  fell  ? 

We  had  much  to  learn,  on  one  side  and  the 
other.  Like  Narcissus  bending  over  his  own 
image,  the  old  peoples  of  the  world,  looking 
into  the  old  rivers  of  history,  saw  only  their 
own  reflection. 

That    evening    Mr.    William    Sharp,    the 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.         3 

American  ambassador,  came  in  for  a  few  mo- 
ments. I  can  see  him  now,  leaning  on  the 
chimney-piece;  his  grave  smile  was  even 
graver  than  usual,  and  his  eyes,  always  se- 
rene, seemed  brighter;  they  shone  with  quiet 
satisfaction.  And,  alluding  to  other  meetings 
when  we  French  had  endeavored  to  impart 
to  our  American  friends  our  own  fervor 
of  conviction,  he  said  in  his  even,  courteous 
voice:  '^Well,  the  time  of  the  propaganda 
is  up." 

The  expression  of  his  face  was  slightly  iron- 
ical, although  full  of  sympathy.  He  perhaps 
felt  that  our  impatient  zeal  had  sometimes 
doubted  the  motives  of  the  United  States,  or, 
rather,  had  misunderstood  that  long  course  of 
serious  thought  during  which  the  great  nation 
had  weighed  its  duties,  not  its  opportunities. 
And  yet,  all  through  that  autumn  and  winter 
of  1916--1917  our  guests  and  our  friends  had 
repeated:  *'You  will  see — ^America  will  go 
into  the  war  within  six  months" — or  four,  or 
three.  They  were  never  tired  of  making  for 
our  benefit  an  exact  and  almost  astronomical 
calculation,  to  prove  that  their  intervention 
was  inevitable. 

"It  will  come,"  said  John  Felder.  "Good 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 


God!"  he  cried,  striking  the  table  hard  with 
his  fist,  "within  three  months  you  will  see 
American  regiments  in  France!" 

I  may  acknowledge  now  that  there  were 
those  among  us  who  doubted,  who  thought 
his  words  a  sympathetic  opinion,  but  nothing 
more.  How  could  it  be  possible  that  Amer- 
ica, leaving  her  own  rich  and  peaceful  coun- 
try, would  side  with  French  ideals  rather  than 
with  German  realities,  and  would  come  to 
our  desolate  fields,  where  death  was  the  only 
harvest  ?  Was  it  possible  that  any  mere 
order  could  improvise  an  army  from  one  day 
to  the  next,  and  transport  it  in  a  mighty  fleet 
across  the  ocean  despite  the  menace  of  Ger- 
man ruthlessness  ? 

We  were  like  unbelievers  to  whom  a  com- 
ing miracle  has  been  announced.  We  hoped 
and  at  the  same  time  we  doubted,  both  hope 
and  doubt  springing  from  our  infinite  longing. 
Yes,  America  would  help  us — ^from  afar — ^but 
would  she  not  be  like  that  other  admirable 
neutral,  the  moon,  which  shed  her  light  on 
our  night-watches  and  our  sorrows  ? 

And  yet  the  fateful  hour  had  struck — Jus- 
tice has  her  dial  as  well  as  her  scales. 

Our    friend,    John    Felder,    beamed    with 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.         5 

silent  satisfaction.  (When  one  speaks  of 
Americans  the  word  "silent"  comes  often  to 
one's  lips.)  His  charming  wife,  from  one  of 
the  Southern  States,  offered  us  tea  with  ges- 
tures and  movements  even  more  graceful  and 
rhythmical  than  usual,  and  an  almost  mys- 
terious friendliness  shone  in  her  eyes,  while 
her  little  Southern  feet,  in  their  gold  slippers, 
peeped  from  under  her  short  black  frock, 
tracing  upon  the  carpet  a  suggestion  of  some 
sacred  triumphal  dance. 

As  the  April  afternoon  drew  toward  its 
close  the  scent  of  horse-chestnuts  and  acacias 
was  wafted  up  into  the  room  from  the  street 
below,  together  with  the  subdued  noises  of 
Parisian  life  in  spring — ^the  muffled  roll  of 
automobiles,  bearing  belated  pleasure-seekers 
toward  the  budding  foliage  of  the  Bois,  the 
happy  cries  of  children  playing  under  trees 
starry  with  flowers.  A  small  group  of  us  were 
leaning  on  the  balcony,  filled  with  new 
thoughts  and,  notwithstanding  the  war  with 
all  its  mourning,  feeling  the  peace  of  the  ap- 
proaching evening,  and  of  the  great  golden 
clouds  sailing  slowly  across  the  clear  sky;  lis- 
tening to  the  children's  voices — ^the  voices  of 
our  hopes  for  the  future — ^becoming  less  and 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 


less  frequent  as  the  shadows  fell,  like  the  twit- 
tering of  birds  in  the  branches  when  twilight 
closes  in. 

Our  talk  was  of  the  one  great  fact.  Like 
all  other  French  people,  we  took  possession  of 
it  as  if  it  had  been  a  victory.  America  had 
entered  the  war !  The  distant  beautiful  moon 
had  come  down  to  our  bleeding  earth  and  was 
going  into  battle  by  our  side — ^but  why  ? 

The  old  butler,  Jean,  long  past  the  age  of 
any  possible  mobilization,  went  to  and  fro 
among  us  with  his  tea-tray,  his  thin  lips 
parted  in  a  beatific  smile :  he  looked  discreetly 
proud,  like  a  family  servant  at  a  wedding- 
feast. 

"Well,"  said  a  voice,  "do  you  believe 
at  last  ?  America  is  as  she  was  in  Christo- 
pher Columbus's  day — she  was  foreseen  and 
guessed  at  then,  and  you  will  see  that  she 
will  again  re-establish  the  equilibrium  of  the 
world." 

It  was  a  woman's  voice,  clear  and  full,  with 
a  ringing  American  accent.  It  was  Daisy 
Folk — "our  Daisy,"  as  we  called  her,  who 
had  been  in  France  for  two  years,  one  of  the 
first  emissaries  from  the  friendship  of  America. 

And  if  we  had  sometimes  doubted,  she, 
Daisy,  had  always  believed. 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.         7 

Her  mission  lay  in  a  little  French  village, 
destroyed  by  fire,  a  tiny  village  of  Lorraine, 
on  the  edge  of  the  forest  of  Parroy.  A  gen- 
erous friend  had  said  to  her,  "Choose  for  me, 
in  devastated  France,  the  poorest  and  most 
badly  wrecked  village  that  you  can  find,"  and, 
as  she  might  in  former  days  have  sought  our 
most  precious  ornament  for  this  same  Cali- 
fornian  friend,  she  had  now  sought  out  and 
chosen  the  village  of  Vitrimont,  and  was  re- 
building it,  stone  by  stone,  living  meanwhile 
among  our  Lorraine  peasants. 

"Yes,"  said  this  philosopher,  "the  Old 
World  made  us,  and  now  you  will  see  the  re- 
flux of  the  New  World  upon  the  Old,  in 
strength,  in  mental  energy,  and  in  affection. 
And  since  you  have  spoken  of  the  moon  in 
referring  to  us,  you  will  have  the  phenomena 
of  the  tides.  You  will  be  sorry  that  you  ever 
doubted,"  she  went  on,  "and  you  will  see 
that,  thanks  to  us,  this  mystery  of  war  and 
death  will  be  cleared  up." 

A  flame  of  faith  shone  in  her  eyes.  "But 
it  is  thanks  to  you,"  she  added,  "that  we  feel 
ourselves  to-day  a  nation.  Time  and  history 
are  the  only  judges  who  can  tell  how  much 
each  of  us  has  given  to  the  other." 


8  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

While  she  spoke  I  saw  again  the  last  eve- 
ning which  I  had  spent  with  Daisy,  in  the 
rough  chamber  which  she  had  improvised  for 
herself  in  the  little  charred  village.  We  had 
dined  out-of-doors,  under  a  slight  shelter  of 
planks  which  our  peasants  had  put  up  for 
her,  and  as  we  talked  we  looked  out  at  the 
line  of  the  forest  waking  to  life  at  the  touch 
of  Spring.  She  wore  that  evening  a  thin  cloak 
of  red  gauze  over  her  dark  dress,  and  with 
her  shining  black  hair,  folded  close  to  her 
head,  her  clear-cut  features,  and  her  deter- 
mined black  eyes,  she  seemed  a  strangely  pic- 
turesque shepherdess  for  her  little  Lorraine 
flock !  She  took  her  violin  and  played  an  old 
tune,  an  air  by  Rameau;  she  looked  very 
happy  as  she  said,  "I  like  to  play  this  French 
music  on  French  soiV*  while  her  foot  pressed 
the  earth  as  if  she  wished  to  take  root.  "I 
love  everything  in  France,  her  past,  her  pres- 
ent, and,"  pointing  to  the  charred  and  crum- 
bling stones,  "the  hope  which  springs  from 
these  ruins.''  And  again  she  said:  "I  am 
building  new  houses  for  my  good  people  here 
on  the  places  where  their  old  ones  stood;  they 
say  I  bring  them  something,  but  on  their  side 
they  give  me  a  treasure.  I  have  my  heart's 
desire,'* 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.         9 

By  going  into  the  war  would  America  have 
her  heart's  desire?  It  was  permissible  to 
think  so  as  we  watched  the  look  of  rejoicing 
and  almost  of  relief  on  the  faces  of  our  new 
allies.  Our  hosts  on  that  April  evening,  who 
had  seen  and  known  the  war,  had  felt  neutral- 
ity to  be  an  oppression. 

Just  then  Jean  appeared  at  the  door  with 
his  proud  and  timid  smile,  asking  us  if  we 
would  be  pleased  to  go  into  the  long  room. 
There  the  lantern  was  being  lighted  to  show 
the  moving  pictures,  for  propaganda  by  this 
means  was  one  of  our  war  institutions.  We 
could  not  claim  to  have  invented  it,  but  dur- 
ing the  winter  those  who  had  organized  the 
service  tried  out  in  the  Felders'  apartment  the 
films  which  were  to  give  America  true  pic- 
tures of  the  war  and  of  France.  The  long 
room  was  already  full,  the  ladies  seated,  while 
the  men  were  patiently  resigned  to  standing 
against  the  wall.  It  was  a  mixed  audience, 
both  French  and  American:  young  officers 
and  professors  just  returned  from  their  mis- 
sions overseas;  American  nurses,  of  widely 
different  types — some  of  them  very  striking 
in  their  military  uniforms. 

Mrs.  H.  was  there,  in  a  long  cape  of  the 
same  horizon-blue  as  our  soldiers;  a  very  long 


10  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

veil  of  the  same  shade  fell  in  straight  folds 
from  a  linen  band  around  her  head,  and  from 
under  it  her  hair  made  a  golden  haze  on  her 
brow;  her  full  red  lips  smiled  with  the  pride 
of  youth;  she  was  an  archangel  of  nurses. 

Near  her  were  more  modest  mortals.  There 
was  Miss  D.,  hidden  in  a  shadowy  corner. 
"You  know  her,"  said  Daisy.  Yes,  I  recog- 
nized her  sweet,  ascetic  face,  with  its  clear, 
soft  eyes.  "You  know,''  Daisy  went  on, 
"she  has  rented  and  left  her  delightful  house 
and  has  come  to  France  to  offer  herself,  with 
all  her  resources,  for  war  work,  but  don't  ever 
speak  to  her  of  it,  or  you  will  displease  her; 
she  only  wants  to  be  an  anonymous  *  sister.'" 
Here  is  a  young  woman  journalist,  much  to 
the  fore,  who  has,  by  her  own  account,  mil- 
lions of  readers  whom  she  instructs  as  to  our 
social  work;  she  is  a  pronounced  and  redoubt- 
able feminist,  and  has  made  the  round  of  the 
Mediterranean — Italy,  Roumania,  the  Greek 
islands  during  the  campaign  of  the  Darda- 
nelles; she  has  almost  fought,  and  has  been 
torpedoed,  swimming  for  her  life  (and  for  her 
newspaper)  in  the  eddies  among  the  wreckage 
of  her  steamer.  She  wears  a  Napoleonic 
cocked  hat,  is  dressed  in  dark  cloth  of  a  sim- 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       11 

pie  and  masculine  cut,  and  carries  a  stout 
stick  in  her  wiry  hand.  She  is  very  different 
from  the  beautiful  archangel,  but  still  it  is 
another  form  of  energy.  Close  to  her  is  one 
of  her  colleagues,  a  very  white  and  meagre 
little  creature,  with  pale  eyes  and  a  sharp 
profile;  she  has  sometimes  bored  us  by  her 
obstinate  wish  to  go  to  the  front — she  is  cer- 
tainly thinking  of  it  now. 

One  thing  always  strikes  us  in  our  new 
allies:  one  American  woman  is  not  in  the 
least  like  another,  except  for  a  trait  which 
they  all  have  in  common — their  determination 
to  reach  the  goal  which  they  set  for  them- 
selves. These  birds  of  passage  have  strong 
wings;  they  know  where  they  are  going. 

Suddenly  it  is  dark  and  silent,  save  for  the 
sharp  click  of  the  machine;  one  scene  follows 
another,  as  we  rehearse,  for  the  benefit  of  our 
friends  in  America,  their  simple  object-lesson. 
First  of  all  comes  Alsace,  and  let  us  hope  that 
our  friends  will  trace  with  a  finger,  as  children 
do,  the  outline  of  the  pictures  we  show  them. 
But,  after  all,  what  can  they  know  of  our 
mourning  for  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  and  of  our 
just  claim  to  them  ?  Here  is  the  landscape — 
forests  of  young  pines  smothered  in  snow, 


12  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

mountain  streams  leaping  and  bounding  down 
into  the  valleys;  villages,  one  just  like  another, 
crowding  piously  around  their  churches,  cha- 
lets with  their  high  cross-beams,  and  on  the 
steeples  and  the  roofs  of  the'  houses,  stiffly 
upright  on  their  nests,  those  faithful  and  dear 
friends,  the  storks. 

Then  glimpses  of  the  old  French  life  of 
Alsace;  the  entry  of  the  kings  of  France  into 
Metz,  and  afterward  into  Strasbourg;  other 
time-honored  proofs  that  Alsace  and  France 
were  one;  old  French  names  graven  on  the 
stones  of  their  cemeteries.  After  the  dead, 
the  living;  we  see  Alsatians  who  had  lived 
through  the  rending  apart  of  their  country  in 
1870.  From  its  hiding-place  behind  the  panels 
of  the  old  wardrobe  they  take  out  the  flag  of 
France,  which  has  been  waiting  there  through 
four  and  forty  long  years;  they  shake  out  its 
sacred  folds,  and,  almost  blinded  by  emotion, 
they  see  it  float  upon  the  breeze  of  France 
over  their  liberated  valley.  We  see  an  old 
woman,  all  bent  and  wrinkled,  taking  from 
its  worn  case  the  likeness  of  her  husband,  a 
French  soldier  killed  in  the  war  of  1870.  She 
gazes  on  it,  seeming  to  be  listening  the  while 
to  the  deep  growling  of  the  cannon  disput- 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       13 

ing  over  her  frail  life  and  her  little  chalet, 
scarcely  more  solid  than  the  stork's  nest  on 
its  roof.  And  now  we  have  the  entry  of  the 
first  detachment  of  French  troops  into  the 
village;  happy  groups  embrace  each  other 
under  the  exultant  flag,  and  we  can  almost 
hear  their  joyful  shouts.  The  crowd  parts, 
the  soldiers  are  drawn  up  in  line,  and  General 
Joffre  appears.  He  salutes  the  flag,  and  gives 
the  kiss  of  France  to  the  little  Alsatian  girl 
who  comes  forward  timidly,  her  face  shad- 
owed by  her  big  black  head-dress. 

The  machine  still  turns,  and  now  we  have 
pictures  of  the  war:  the  chasseurs  Alpins  in 
the  Vosges,  sliding  over  the  snowy  slopes  on 
their  skis,  or  leading  long  lines  of  sleds,  har- 
nessed to  teams  of  dogs  who  seem  to  delight 
in  their  work.  On  the  outskirts  of  a  wood 
big  guns  lift  their  heads  as  if  they  were  trying 
to  get  the  enemy's  scent.  It  is  an  impressive 
sight  when  two  of  them  belch  forth  their 
shells  at  the  same  moment.  After  a  quick  re- 
coil they  slide  forward  again  on  their  carriages 
to  their  former  positions,  and  far  away  we 
see  a  terrific  explosion;  the  earth  heaves  vio- 
lently upward  and  falls  back  again,  while 
dense,  black    smoke    rises    slowly    in    thick 


14  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

spirals  until  it  is  gradually  dispersed  and  ab- 
sorbed into  the  heavy  air,  where  the  clouds 
hang  low  under  a  brooding  sky.  This  forward 
leap  of  the  guns  is  like  the  bound  of  some 
huge,  keen-jawed  hound — it  is  equally  supple, 
equally  alive  and  dangerous — and  also  equally 
obedient. 

The  pictures  go  on,  one  after  another,  until 
the  sharp  click  of  the  machine  gets  upon  one's 
nerves.  Now  it  is  a  dreary  sequence  of  ruined 
villages,  wrecked  churches,  dead  towns,  deso- 
late fields;  at  a  spot  where  three  roads  meet 
a  Christ  hanging  on  his  cross  is  alone  in  the 
uptorn  and  deserted  countryside.  After  that 
we  have  the  sea — ^the  Atlantic  Ocean,  with 
its  long,  slow  swell.  On  the  horizon  a  black 
dot  appears,  very  small  at  first,  but  growing 
gradually  larger,  and  followed  by  a  trail  of 
smoke;  we  can  make  out  a  steamer,  rolling 
and  pitching,  but  steadily  going  on.  It  is  the 
Rochester,  the  first  vessel  to  leave  America 
after  the  infamous  German  announcement 
that  every  keel  afloat,  without  exception, 
would  be  torpedoed.  All  the  German  sharks, 
warned  of  her  sailing,  are  lying  in  wait  for 
her  under  the  waves,  but  she  manages  to 
elude  their  jaws,  going  on  and  on  until  at  last 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       15 

she  enters  the  port  of  Bordeaux,  to  be 
greeted  by  cheering,  and  formally  welcomed 
by  an  official  committee,  largely  made  up  of 
bright-faced  girls  bearing  great  bunches  of 
roses.  The  young  captain  stands  smiling,  evi- 
dently amused,  and  shakes  the  hands  out- 
stretched to  him  vigorously;  we  can  see  him 
laugh.  To  him  the  sensational  crossing  has 
clearly  been  good  sport. 

All  this  passes  quickly,  with  the  jerky  stac- 
cato movement  of  the  cinema,  and  now  we 
have  Salonica,  a  white  city  crowned  with 
cupolas,  and,  to  all  appearance,  smiling  and 
happy,  as  all  Mediterranean  cities  are  when 
seen  from  that  enchanted  sea.  On  its  water- 
front French  and  English  regiments  are  march- 
ing to  the  music  of  their  bands.  And  now  we 
are  in  the  valley  of  the  Vardar,  and  in  the 
olive-orchards  and  under  the  huge  cork-trees 
the  big  guns  recoil,  leap  forward  and  bark, 
as  they  did  under  the  pines  of  Alsace.  The 
same  explosion,  the  same  black  spirals,  the 
same  acrid  smoke  slowly  dispersing  in  the 
clear  eastern  light;  the  dry  Greek  earth  shows 
the  sinuous  line  of  trenches.  How  much  alike 
all  war  is !  Always  the  same  soldiers,  in  blue 
or  in  khaki,  working  at  the  same  tasks,  like  a 


16  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

new  order  of  humanity,  devoted  only  to  the 
new  world-business  of  warfare;  always  the 
same  holes  in  the  ground,  the  same  growling 
of  guns,  near  or  distant,  the  same  proud 
groups  around  generals  who  give  decorations 
to  their  men  and  kiss  the  flags. 

The  earth  is  a  great  globe  turning  at  our 
touch  as  the  show  goes  on.  Here  is  a  crowd 
of  diminutive  Japanese,  working  like  ants  in 
one  of  their  munition  factories;  again  we  have 
myriads  of  shells,  neatly  piled,  while  the  guns 
roar  over  the  heads  of  small  soldiers  belonging 
to  a  race  which  we  used  to  look  upon  as  the 
most  astonishing  playthings  in  the  world, 
often  diverting  and  sometimes  mysteriously 
menacing.  Now  they  are  our  allies,  working 
and  creating  with  us  the  mighty  rhythm  of 
the  European  War.  In  the  little  wooden 
houses,  behind  the  paper  windows,  the  women 
of  Nippon,  crouching  on  their  spotless  mats, 
follow  the  story  of  the  war  in  the  English 
newspapers. 

Now  the  landscape  is  all  white;  there  are 
ice-floes  in  gray  water;  the  sky  is  pale  and 
cold,  and  again  we  see  steamers,  this  time 
pitching  and  rolling  in  a  heavy  and  half-frozen 
sea.  They  will  land  shells,  always  more  shells, 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       17 

on  the  Murman  coast,  the  black  smoke 
rises  lazily  from  the  engine  waiting  for  them 
on  the  little  railway.  And  at  the  end  we  are 
back  again  in  America;  in  the  virgin  forests 
negro  wood-cutters  sing  as  their  blows  fall; 
the  mighty  trunks,  which  have  held  their 
own  against  the  storms  of  centuries,  shiver 
throughout  their  length  and  bow  themselves 
with  a  sound  of  cracking  and  rending,  until 
at  last  they  crash  to  the  ground,  as  if  aston- 
ished that  they  must  die.  It  is  war  carried 
into  the  very  sanctuaries  where  we  were  used 
to  worship  the  silent  and  everlasting  forces 
of  nature. 

Memory  carried  me  back  to  Africa.  I  saw 
again  the  wide  yellow  sands,  the  sun-baked 
fields,  hedged  with  cactus,  the  stretches  of 
plain  where  a  scanty  growth  of  corn  strug- 
gled for  life,  the  welcome  groups  of  trees, 
so  few  and  so  beautiful  that  one  saw  them 
from  afar  across  the  rolling  stretches  of  bare 
earth,  waiting  to  soothe  the  weary  traveller 
in  the  purple  shade  at  their  feet.  In  the  still 
air,  palpitating  with  heat,  the  great  aloe  plants 
lifted  their  fantastic  flowers,  as  tall  and  reg- 
ular as  Jacob's  ladder;  flocks  of  storks  sailed 
by;  biblical  shepherds  played  on  slender  pipes, 


18  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

making  a  sound  as  thin  and  clear  as  a  bird's 
call. 

Yet  war  is  there  also,  arousing  a  people 
who  seemed  to  us  to  be  sunk  in  a  never-ending 
slumber,  dreaming  only  of  the  joys  of  their 
paradise.  These  scenes,  as  I  say,  were  repro- 
duced for  me  by  the  cinema  of  my  memory. 
Could  it  be  that  in  those  remote  Moroccan 
villages,  whose  inhabitants  seemed  as  igno- 
rant of  the  mighty  drama  of  history  as  a  hive 
of  bees,  there  was  weeping  and  lamentation 
over  sons  and  bridegrooms  summoned  to  the 
war  in  far-off  France,  from  which  they  might 
never  return  ?  Would  little  Ladife  never  see 
her  Miloud  again  ?  Was  the  Musulman  ceme- 
tery not  to  be  the  everlasting  resting-place  of 
the  Moroccan  soldier  fallen  in  the  fields  of 
the  Ourcq  ?  And  yet  he  wore  a  powerful  tal- 
isman around  his  neck,  and  his  old  mother 
had  made  long  pilgrimages  on  foot,  and  had 
hung  bags  full  of  prayers  on  the  branches  of 
the  sacred  olive-tree.  The  majestic  Lebanon, 
which  we  had  seen  in  other  days  bathing  its 
historic  slopes  in  the  Mediterranean,  and  lift- 
ing its  triumphant  crest  against  the  Asian 
sky — ^was  it  also  shaken  by  the  convulsion  of 
war  ?  Could  it  be  true  that  the  smiling  and 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       19 

gentle  tribes,  smoking  their  narghilehs  while 
they  waited  confidently  for  the  aid  of  France, 
had  been  forced  to  feel  the  choking  grip  of 
Turkey  and  Germany,  and  to  suffer  famine 
and  death  ?  Was  it  possible  that  all  around 
this  flower-garden  of  the  Mediterranean,  in- 
tended for  the  world's  delight,  men  and 
women  were  in  the  grasp  of  sterner  emotions 
than  those  caused  by  the  sudden  enchant- 
ment of  spring,  or  the  heavy  perfume  of 
orange-flowers  and  tuberoses  ? 

Happy  are  they  who  have  seen,  or  at  least 
imagined,  the  real  face  of  our  Mother  Earth — 
to  whom  the  names  of  oceans,  of  rivers,  and 
of  countries  are  not  merely  words  printed  on 
a  sheet  of  colored  paper.  What  we  have  seen 
our  eyes  possess  forever,  and  can  enjoy  until 
all  light  goes  out  from  them — and  perhaps 
thereafter. 

The  cinema  has  stopped;  the  object-lesson 
of  the  war  is  over;  we  have  seen  what  it  was 
well  for  us  to  see,  as  children  are  told  as  much 
of  life  as  is  good  for  them  to  know;  in  both 
cases  the  darker  secrets  are  withheld — ^we 
have  not  seen  death,  nor  even  acute  suf- 
fering. The  lamps  are  lit  again.  There  are 
newcomers,  women  and  girls  in  khaki,  with 


20  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

short  skirts  and  felt  hats,  masculine  even  to 
the  chin-straps.  Strength,  strength  again — 
their  eyes  meet  ours  as  frankly  and  coolly  as 
those  of  young  soldiers;  their  hand-shake  is 
short  and  businesslike.  Miss  S.  tells  me  that 
she  has  charge  of  a  motor  ambulance  belong- 
ing to  a  hospital  where  all  the  staff,  both 
surgeons  and  physicians,  are  women — ''all 
women — ^no  men,"  she  repeats,  with  a  touch 
of  pride.  Yes,  a  touch  of  pride — and  yet  I 
could  not  help  feeling  within  myself  a  slight 
and  half-unconscious  resistance.  I  could  not 
help  thinking:  ''They  may  all  be  'women'  at 
the  hospital,  but  there  is  something  not  quite 
'woman'  in  the  clean-cut  features  at  which  I 
am  gazing;  they  seem  to  have  been  turned 
out,  at  one  stroke,  by  the  hand  of  a  skilful 
artist.  Miss  S.  has  the  impeccable  precision 
of  an  instrument  which  is  well-made,  carefully 
polished,  and  adjusted  to  form  part  of  a  great 
machine — ^but  it  is  an  instrument  after  all." 
And  so  we  men  and  women  look  at  one  an- 
other; our  hearts  are  open  to  a  new  friendship, 
we  stretch  out  our  hands — and  then  some- 
times, for  no  real  reason,  from  the  merest 
trifle,  a  chance  word,  even  a  glance,  we  come 
up  against  some  old  prejudice,  some  ancestral 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       21 

idea,  reaching  back  to  the  twilight  of  time. 
In  our  minds  we  have  long  exalted  two  differ- 
ent types  of  womanhood — ^the  woman  capable 
of  loving  with  all  her  heart,  and  the  Madonna 
— each  on  her  own  altar.  These  modern  girls 
have  stepped  down  from  the  altars  on  which 
sacrifices  were  offered  to  women — and  on 
which  they  were  often  themselves  sacrificed. 
All  is  broad  daylight  in  these  young  heads, 
full  of  democratic  and  liberal  ideas,  and  yet 
this  new  type  is  in  its  turn  dragging  and  push- 
ing the  ponderous  machine  of  life  in  time  of  war. 
"Will  you  introduce  me  to  Mrs.  B.  ?"  said 
a  young  French  priest,  the  Abbe  F.  He  wore 
around  his  neck  the  chain  and  cross  of  the 
French  military  chaplains,  and  on  his  head  a 
police  cap  with  two  rows  of  braid.  Of  Irish 
extraction,  he  is  to  start  to-morrow  for  the 
United  States,  in  order  to  speak  to  Irishmen 
on^  behalf  of  France.  He  is  taking  down  the 
names  of  bishops  to  whom  he  may  have  ac- 
cess, and  makes  a  special  note  (with  a  view  to 
his  possible  conversion)  of  a  dignitary  of  the 
church,  who,  being  under  the  influence  of 
Bernstorff's  agents,  denounced  France  in  the 
Catholic  cathedral  of  New  York  City  as  "the 
sink  of  the  world."' 


22  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

The  Irish  question,  according  to  the  Abbe 
F.,  does  not  concern  England  only,  for  in  the 
United  States  the  Catholic  clergy,  whose 
ranks  are  largely  recruited  from  the  Irish,  are 
active  and  influential.  During  the  two  years 
and  a  half  that  American  neutrality  lasted, 
German  propaganda  had  the  field  almost  to 
itself  and  sowed  many  mines  therein,  trusting 
to  their  exploding  later;  there  is  great  need  of 
mine-sweeping,  which  is  not  an  easy  job,  as 
the  Germans  were  careful  to  foment  the  politi- 
cal and  racial  hostilities  which  have  existed 
between  England  and  Ireland  for  centuries, 
while  France  was  condemned  as  irreligious, 
being  represented  to  Catholic  Americans  as  a 
light  woman,  who  had  thrown  her  Phrygian 
cap  to  the  winds,  and  renounced  the  princi- 
ples and  traditions  of  her  family  in  order 
to  plunge  into  vice.  The  chastisement  which 
awaited  her,  according  to  these  good  prophets, 
was  that  of  Don  Juan.  Her  courage  was  not 
to  be  denied,  but  it  was  the  courage  of  the 
atheist  before  the  Commander's  statue,  mock- 
ing and  defiant.  To  corroborate  this  verdict 
a  few  of  our  loosest  novels  (largely  written 
for  the  foreign  market)  were  distributed  as 
tracts   and  our  Puritan   judges  were  virtu- 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       23 

ously  shocked.  The  Commander  (who  was,  of 
course,  the  Kaiser)  would  force  the  atheist, 
step  by  step,  to  his  death.  The  picture  was 
easy  to  draw,  and  at  a  distance  of  three  thou- 
sand miles  all  the  complicated  strokes  which 
go  to  make  up  a  true  image  are  invisible. 

Just  there  the  door  opened  again,  and  a 
dozen  young  men  came  in,  one  after  another, 
so  young  that  they  looked  like  a  band  of 
students.  After  speaking  to  our  hostess  they 
were  introduced  to  us  as  a  group.  All  Ameri- 
cans, they  appeared  to  resemble  each  other 
because  of  the  look  in  their  faces,  which  was 
uniformly  bright  and  careless,  with  the  ready 
smile  of  youth.  They  had  come  that  very  day 
from  Belgium  and  the  invaded  districts  of 
France,  where  they  had  been  stationed  for 
more  than  two  years. 

"The  delegates  of  the  C.  R.  B."Thus  they 
were  presented  to  us,  "C.  R.  B."  standing  for 
"Commission  for  Relief  in  Belgium,"  and,  by 
extension,  the  invaded  north  of  France. 

At  that  time  the  melancholy  processions  of 
refugees  had  not  yet  brought  home  to  us  the 
overwhelming  impression  of  our  invaded  coun- 
try. These  few  Americans  were  among  the 
first  to  bring  us  their  testimony;  some  had 


24  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

lived  for  months,  even  for  years,  in  our  oc- 
cupied provinces,  others  had  actually  seen  the 
invasion,  followed  the  resistance  made  to  it, 
and  touched  with  their  fingers  (unable  to  do 
more  than  give  a  little  nourishment)  the  gag 
thrust  by  our  enemies  into  the  throats  of  nine 
and  a  half  millions  of  Belgians  and  French, 
which  would  have  stifled  even  their  cries  of 
hunger  if  the  C.  R.  B.  had  not  been  or- 
ganized, and  had  not  taken  up  the  task  of 
making  it  possible  for  these  people,  if  not  to 
live,  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  word,  at  least 
to  endure. 

"The  C.  R.  B.,"  said  Harder,  introducing 
himself,  "only  represents  initials  in  the  com- 
plicated alphabet  of  war,  for  I  don't  believe 
you  have  read  the  statistics  given  in  our  big 
blue  reports/V 

"No,"  said  the  beautiful  archangel,  "there 
are  too  many  figures." 

"Well,"  said  Harder,  "the  story  of  the  C. 
R.  B.  is  almost  as  long  as  the  war.  Some  of 
us  were  already  in  Belgium  when  it  began, 
and  others  came  there  in  the  first  days.  We 
were  neutrals  then,  and  the  great  and  tragic 
spectacle  attracted  us.  We  had  a  chance  to 
see   the  famous   German  organization,   and 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       25 

also  to  see  the  Belgian  resistance;  we  could  go 
from  one  side  to  the  other,  counting  and  judg- 
ing the  strokes  and  counter-strokes  like  um- 
pires. We  had  mingled  feelings,  but  curi- 
osity and  love  of  excitement  were  uppermost. 
To  like  the  sight  of  combatants,  whether  they 
be  bulls  or  cocks  or  men,  is  a  natural  mascu- 
line appetite,  and  so  is  a  taste  for  danger. 
Besides  that,  we  felt  great  pity,  and  we  hoped 
to  be  able  to  make  ourselves  useful  in  trans- 
porting and  caring  for  the  wounded.  But 
above  all  was  the  longing  to  see  and  to  know 
what  was  happening  in  Europe,  where  the 
nations  were  devouring  each  other.  I  sailed 
from  New  York  with  eight  hundred  Germans 
who  were  going  back  to  Germany  to  take 
their  places  in  the  army.  They  all  looked  ex- 
actly alike;  they  had  the  same  sporting 
clothes,  the  same  cassowary  feathers  in  their 
felt  hats,  although  they  came  from  all  the  dif- 
ferent States;  they  all  sang  the  same  patriotic 
songs,  as  if  they  had  all  left  the  same  school 
that  very  morning.  One  saw  immediately 
what  was  meant  by  the  German  military  sys- 
tem, and — since  I  am  giving  you  the  first  im- 
pressions of  a  neutral — ^let  me  say  that  the 
effect  was  rather  fine.  They  came,  thus  unit- 


26  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

ed,  from  large  and  small  towns  in  all  our 
States;  from  banks,  factories,  and  shops,  like 
a  regiment  hastening,  with  colors  flying  and 
music  playing,  to  answer  the  first  appeal 
of  the  Fatherland.  Being  Germans  and  sol- 
diers, they  purposely  ignored  every  one  on 
board  who  was  not  a  German  and  a  soldier; 
the  student  scars  on  many  of  their  faces 
made  them  seem  to  wear  the  stigmata  of  war 
already,  as  if  they  were  dedicated  as  a  race  to 
bloodshed.  But  the  war  was  short  so  far  as 
they  were  concerned.  We  saw  them  exchange 
uneasy  looks  when  the  wireless  telegraph 
crackled  overhead,  for  they  well  knew  that 
English  and  French  patrol  boats  were  watch- 
ing the  liners  for  such  passengers  as  they. 
One  day  a  delegation  of  them  went  to  ask  our 
Dutch  captain  if  he  would  not  go  back  to 
New  York.  He  had  told  them  honestly  that 
French  and  English  cruisers  were  drawing  un- 
comfortably near,  and  they  preferred  to  re- 
turn to  their  counters  and  desks  rather  than 
take  the  chance  of  an  internment  camp  for 
the  duration  of  the  war.  I  saw  the  delega- 
tion coming  out  of  the  captain's  cabin,  and 
they  did  not  look  happy.  The  steamer  had 
a  cargo  for  Rotterdam,  and  could  not  turn 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       27 

back.  On  our  seventh  day  out  the  warriors 
and  ourselves  were  waked  by  what  we  civil- 
ians thought  was  a  clap  of  thunder — I  was 
not  yet  familiar  with  gun-fire !  A  French 
patrol  boat  was  so  close  to  us  that  I  could 
read  her  name,  La  Savoie,  The  signal  to  stop 
floated  from  her  mast,  and  her  eight  pretty 
little  guns  were  turned  on  us.  A  French  offi- 
cer came  with  the  utmost  politeness  to  take 
possession  of  us.  As  he  stepped  on  the  deck 
he  gravely  saluted  the  ladies,  who  were  sit- 
ting, considerably  excited,  in  their  deck  chairs, 
and  this  salute  amused  me  so  much  that  I 
made  a  note  of  it,  for  since  the  eight  hundred 
Germans  had  started  on  their  campaign  not 
one  cassowary  plume  had  bowed  itself  before 
the  feminine  sex. 

"The  affair  was  soon  over,  and  we  had  only 
to  follow  the  little  patrol  boat  as  a  whale  fol- 
lows a  sardine  which  he  cannot  snap  up. 
That  was  our  sudden  entrance  into  war;  the 
Savoiey  with  the  eyes  of  her  guns  looking  at  us 
all  the  time,  led  us  to  Brest,  and  all  along  the 
coast  of  France  we  saw  mysterious  and  intelli- 
gent signal-lights  sending  the  news  from  one 
station  to  another  of  the  capture  and  of  our 
passing.  At  Brest  our  eight  hundred  fellow 


28  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

passengers,  now  prisoners  for  as  long  as  the 
war  should  last,  left  us.  We  saw  them  going 
off  toward  the  shore,  still  singing;  song  is  one 
of  the  forces  drawing  them  together.  We  were 
told  that  they  were  to  be  interned  in  a  little 
Breton  fishing  village. 

"A  few  days  later,"  Harder  went  on,  '*I 
was  In  Berlin,  for  I  went  into  the  war  from 
the  German  end,  and  I  am  glad  of  it,  for  I 
am  sure  now  of  what  I  know" — and  he 
clinched  his  hands.  "In  Berlin  I  saw  the 
joyous  side  of  war;  It  was  a  sword-dance,  if 
you  choose,  but  the  rhythm  was  lively,  if 
somewhat  fierce,  and  I  say  again  without  hesi- 
tation that  it  was  imposing.  The  joy  was 
universal;  every  German  seemed  to  be  fulfil- 
ling his  destiny.  There  was  no  need  for  them 
to  read  Treitschke  or  Bernhardi,  whose  for- 
mulas had  been  mixed  with  their  mothers' 
milk  and  with  the  first  meat  of  their  child- 
hood, and  had  become  part  of  their  flesh  and 
blood.  The  pride  of  war  was  everywhere. 
Officers  with  measured  tread  and  heads  held 
high  superintended  the  departure  of  the 
troops  from  the  railway-stations,  like  noble- 
men who  had  not  only  the  authority  of  their 
rank  In  the  army  but  that  of  the  ruling  class 
to  which  they  belonged.  One  saw  the  prole- 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       29 

tarians  of  war  led  by  its  rulers — the  proletariat 
being  glad  to  obey  and  trained  to  enthusiasm. 
The  streets  were  gay  with  banners,  flags,  and 
patriotic  posters,  the  crowded  theatres  glori- 
fied the  Fatherland  and  the  war.  To  be  sure, 
as  the  trains  went  off  one  did  see  women's 
faces  drawn  with  anguish.'' 

"Yes,"  said  Daisy,  "I  also  have  seen  that. 
When  the  war  began  I  went  from  London  to 
Berlin  in  order  to  take  home  some  German 
girls  who  had  been  staying  in  England,  and 
to  bring  back  English  girls  who  had  been 
studying  in  Berlin.  Germania  was  like  an 
old  mother  whose  sons  are  leaving  her  in 
order  to  make  splendid  marriages;  they  were 
sure  to  return  to  her  richer  than  they  went, 
bringing  beautiful  brides  of  high  lineage." 

"We  all  of  us  felt  as  if  we  were  in  a  pre- 
cocious springtime,"  Harder  went  on.  "I 
cannot  express  the  sensation  in  the  language 
of  war  or  of  politics;  one  has  to  use  terms 
descriptive  of  life,  of  nature,  in  order  to  ex- 
plain the  excitement  throughout  Germany. 
The  people  were  like  bees  who  had  been 
waiting  until  it  was  time  to  swarm:  at  last 
the  earth  was  covered  with  flowers  ready  to 
be  plundered. 

"And  if  one  tried  to  talk  at  a  table  d'hote,  or 


30  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

in  one  of  the  private  houses  in  which  I  was 
received,  this  first  impression  was  confirmed 
and  strengthened;  collective  enthusiasm  is 
strange  to  us  Americans,  because  as  a  nation 
we  are  independent  and  even  self-contained. 

"Officers,,  professors,  shopkeepers,  all  recited 
in  the  same  manner  their  lesson  from  the 
Bible  of  War.  Some  had  taught,  others  had 
learned  it,  but  the  matter  was  the  same.  The 
sacred  book  of  their  national  life  was  open, 
and  in  it  were  inscribed  their  animosities, 
their  claims,  and  their  hopes.  Every  one  had 
his  own  historic  view  of  the  war,  if  I  may- 
call  it  so,  looking  back  for  centuries  over  the 
life  of  the  many  little  German  states  which  had 
been  in  the  shadow,  made  unhappy  by  jeal- 
ousies, and  oppressed  by  unjust  wars. 

"Nobody  mentioned  Serbia,  nor  the  Russian 
mobilization,  nor  even  the  French  air-raids 
over  Nuremberg — ^the  casus  belli,  real  or 
imaginary,  did  not  lie  there.  In  the  taverns, 
thick  with  pipe-smoke,  we  talked  of  the 
Thirty  Years'  War  with  rapier-scarred  stu- 
dents or  professors,  while  the  foam  on  our 
tall  beer-mugs  sank  down,  its  bubbles  softly 
breaking.  Each  speaker  was  the  mouthpiece 
of  a  Germany  both  strong  and  vindictive. 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       31 

which  had  been  for  centuries  deprived  of  a 
seat  at  the  banquet  of  civihzation  through 
the  injustice  of  fate.  They  had  long  been 
metaphorically  hungry  and  thirsty  within  the 
limits  of  Prussia;  there  were  black  pages  in 
their  chronicles  to  be  effaced.  During  the 
Thirty  Years'  War,  to  which  they  constantly 
recurred,  their  population  had  been  reduced 
from  twenty  millions  to  four.  If  you  had 
seen  their  frowning  brows  and  the  gleam  of 
hate  in  their  eyes,  the  eyes  of  men  used  to 
poring  over  books  and  seeing  life  through  the 
medium  of  printed  words,  you  would  have 
said  that  they  themselves  had  seen  and  suf- 
fered in  this  time  of  misery  and  humiliation; 
they  were  like  men  who  have  been  cheated 
out  of  their  youth  and  want  revenge  in  their 
later  years.  And  then  they  spoke  of  Napo- 
leon and  Jena,  trembling  with  anger;  they 
might  have  been  the  students  who  sharpened 
their  sabres  in  1806  on  the  steps  of  the  French 
Legation.  In  1870  Germany  soldered  to- 
gether the  fragments  of  her  broken  sword, 
*Nothung,'  or  Necessity,  a  blade  of  divine 
origin.  Now,  at  last,  this  sword  would  cut 
its  way  through  the  forest  which  awaited  it, 
full  of  spring  and  the  singing  of  birds.  Their 


32  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

myths  were  always  present  to  their  minds,  as 
well  as  their  history;  they  thought  equally  of 
the  Rhinegold  and  of  the  Basin  of  Briey.  I 
saw  them  in  their  beer-halls,  terribly  real- 
istic and  also  often  terribly  poetic,  justifying 
Truth  by  Fable.  And  with  all  that,  biblical; 
the  idea  of  the  'chosen  people'  was  in  their 
heads,  clouded  by  symbolism  and  by  the  hope 
of  revenge.  The  German  nation  were  the 
children  of  Israel,  chosen  and  cherished  by 
the  God  of  vengeance,  and  their  vocation  was 
to  conquer  the  Promised  Land.  They  be- 
trayed themselves  without  meaning  to,  and 
were  not  careful  to  conceal  that  they  spoke  as 
aggressors.  There  was  no  question  then  of 
*the  war  that  was  forced  upon  us';  war  was 
the  outward  flowering,  so  to  speak,  of  their 
inward  growth,  with  roots  deep  in  the  soil 
and  full  of  sap.  War  justified  and  explained 
itself  by  their  convictions  as  to  the  past  and 
the  future. 

"The  air  grew  blue  and  heavy  with  pipe- 
smoke,  mingled  with  the  fumes  of  annals  and 
fables;  there  were  long  silences,  while  the  beer 
was  slowly  digesting.  I  watched  these  strong, 
ruddy  German  faces  grow  more  peaceful  and 
almost  sleepy;  I'm  thinking  particularly  while 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       33 

I  speak  of  two  professors,  who  gradually  be- 
came kind  and  even  sympathetic. 

"Yes,  this  affair  of  Belgium  was  certainly 
very  sad,  but  one  must  make  up  one's  mind 
to  it.  In  order  to  build  up  the  wonderful  new 
Germany  some  old  nests  had  to  be  destroyed; 
there  was  some  shooting,  of  course — ^that  was 
war;  there  were  outcries  from  women  and 
children  and  from  fanatical  and  superstitious 
priests — ^but  why  did  these  birds,  with  their 
useless  chirping,  attempt  to  stand  angrily  on 
the  edges  of  their  nests  ?  Poor  little  Belgium, 
poor  France;  they  gasped,  they  suffered,  but 
they  were  not  meant  to  die.  They  would  only 
undergo  a  metempsychosis;  the  soul  of  Ger- 
many would  replace  their  own.  The  Germans 
did  not  hate  them;  it  was  a  case  of  *Nothung,' 
Necessity,  leading  the  German  nation  on. 
German  politics  became,  in  their  own  words, 
a  'Weltanschauung,'  religious  as  well  as  po- 
litical. Sprung  from  the  old  Teutonic  gods, 
the  Germans  laid  claim  to  the  earth,  and 
their  bellicose  reveries  were  accompanied  by 
German  orchestras,  giving  them  that  splendid 
German  music,  where  the  most  vehement 
passion  Is  curbed  by  the  most  exact  rhythm, 
and  where  the  incomprehensible  and  the  in- 


34  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

expressible  are  explained  with  a  logic  which 
borders  on  inspiration." 

"Confess,"  said  Mrs.  Felder,  tapping  the 
floor  with  her  little  golden  foot  at  this  tribute 
to  German  music,  "confess  that  you  admired 
these  men." 

"Certainly,"  replied  Harder.  "I  was  not 
a  judge,  I  was  only  an  investigator,  come 
from  another  planet,  and  this  mixture  of 
reality,  poetry,  prophetic  spirit,  and  calcula- 
tion interested  me  greatly.  And  as  I  was 
then  a  war  correspondent,  I  was  filled  with 
desire  to  see  the  oncoming  of  the  mighty  tidal 
wave.  By  October  I  was  in  Antwerp.  Only 
we  neutrals  were  able  to  see,  in  such  a  short 
lapse  of  time,  both  of  the  faces  shown  by  the 
war.  Brussels  was  already  occupied,  but  Ant- 
werp not  yet,  and  I  was  there  when  the  at- 
tack came.  At  first  the  sound  of  the  great 
German  marine  guns,  as  they  hammered  at 
the  outer  forts,  sounded  dull  and  far  off,  but 
it  grew  nearer  and  louder,  until  they  seemed, 
like  Jupiter  Tonans,  bent  on  deafening  us. 
The  confidence  which  the  city  had  placed  in 
the  'indestructible'  forts  gave  way  to  anx- 
iety and  distress.  I  remembered  what  my 
tavern-prophets    had    said    over  their  beer- 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       35 

mugs.  They  must  have  been  reminded  of  the 
walls  of  Jericho  falling  when  the  trumpets  of 
the  ^chosen  people'  were  blown  before  them. 
*'The  defense  of  the  Antwerp  forts  was  as 
unavailing  as  that  of  Jericho's  walls.  You 
have  all  heard  and  read  of  the  exodus  of  the 
population,  but  I  may  speak  of  it,  for  I  have 
not  read  of  it,  but  have  seen  it.  Ought  I  not 
to  say,  as  a  good  newspaper  correspondent," 
he  added  with  a  smile,  "that  I  have  'lived  it'  ? 
But  it  was  enough  to  see  it,  and  if  I  had  not 
been  so  recently  in  Berlin  I  should  have  had 
only  one  side  of  a  great  experience.  The  noise 
was  like  the  cracking  of  a  world  falling  to 
pieces — I  thought  of  what  the  professor  had 
said  about  the  old  nests — ^but  one  did  not  do 
much  thinking.  Fires  had  broken  out  on 
every  side,  and  although  our  eyes  were  full 
of  horrors  we  were  curious  to  see  the  great 
reservoirs  of  petroleum  burning  in  the  red 
night.  Huge  black  columns  of  smoke  rose  in 
the  sharp  October  air,  and  billows  of  purple 
flame  blotted  out  the  sky.  One  saw  only  des- 
olation and  flight — ^the  flight  of  a  whole  peo- 
ple." .  .  .  Here  Harder  interrupted  himself, 
as  if  he  feared  to  show  personal  feeling. 
Americans    are    always    on  their  guard !  It 


36  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

was  growing  late;  the  windows  were  closed 
and  old  Jean's  careful  hands  had  drawn  the 
blue  curtains  over  them;  the  only  lamp  in  the 
large  room  threw  its  white  light  over  the 
turquoise-blue  of  the  chairs;  a  tapestry  show- 
ing a  fantastic  hunting-scene  hung  on  one  of 
the  walls,  and  in  the  shadow  its  figures  seemed 
to  come  to  life;  an  impatient  stag  thrust  his 
antlers  into  an  autumnal  tree. 

"Please  stay  where  you  are/'  said  Mrs. 
Felder,  in  a  tone  of  authority,  "and  Jean  shall 
bring  tea  and  sandwiches  if  we  are  hungry.'* 
And  at  the  same  time,  in  her  very  gracious 
and  feminine  manner,  with  her  sad  and  some- 
what enigmatic  smile,  she  bade  good-by  to 
some  of  her  guests.  Five  or  six  of  us,  includ- 
ing John  Felder,  stayed  with  Daisy  around 
the  hearth,  which  in  this  mild  evening  was 
full  of  flowering  azaleas.  With  her  light  and 
measured  step  she  went  to  the  door  and  closed 
it,  as  if  to  show  that  we  were  her  prisoners. 
Then  she  sat  down,  her  slender  hands  beating 
a  measure  on  her  knees. 

"Go  on,"  she  said. 

"I  obey,"  Harder  answered,  yielding  with 
his  young  smile  to  her  feminine  insistence. 
He  hesitated  for  a  second,  and  then  went  on. 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       37 

*' You  know  our  mothers  used  sometimes  to 
tell  us  of  the  end  of  the  world,  and  what  a 
noise  it  would  make,  and  we  sometimes 
thought  of  it;  but  what  nobody  could  imagine, 
and  what  it  is  impossible  to  tell,  is  the  suffer- 
ing. For  my  own  part  I  had  no  idea  of  what 
this  war  was,  and  was  going  to  be,  until  I  saw 
that  exodus  of  poor  people  flying  with  Death 
behind  them,  striking  at  them  as  they  went. 
On  the  28th  of  September  the  Forts  of 
Waelhem  and  Wavre  fell,  and  on  the  29th 
Fort  Lierre,  then  Fort  Koningshoyckt,  and 
on  the  7th  of  October  the  King,  the  Belgian 
government  officials,  and  the  foreign  legations 
went  across  the  Scheldt  and  made  their  way 
to  the  coast  of  France.  From  all  the  vil- 
lages lying  between  the  forts  and  the  city 
fugitives  came  pouring  in  with  their  cattle 
and  their  carts.  They  had  faith  in  Antwerp, 
their  citadel,  so  they  camped  in  the  open 
squares  or  wherever  they  could  find  shelter.  In 
the  evening  of  the  7th  notices  signed  by  Gen- 
eral Guise  were  posted  on  the  walls  of  the 
town,  to  warn  those  who  meant  to  leave  that 
they  had  better  start,  and  that  those  remain- 
ing should  take  refuge  in  cellars.  The  fugi- 
tives made  for  the  Scheldt.  Rafts,  lighters. 


38  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

ferry-boats,  fishing-smacks — everything  which 
could  float  upon  the  water  was  soon  danger- 
ously full,  and  the  river,  with  all  its  branches, 
was  covered  in  a  few  hours  with  these  frail 
floating  houses. 

"The  Belgian  army  crossed  the  bridges,  go- 
ing to  the  west,  toward  Waes;  in  the  intervals 
between  black  darkness  and  sudden  light,  be- 
tween sinister  silence  and  explosions,  followed 
by  the  sound  of  crumbling  walls  and  cries  ris- 
ing from  the  river,  the  danger  became  more 
and  more  imminent.  Only  the  imagination 
of  painters  has  ever  given  any  idea  of  such 
terrors.  The  boats,  knocking  one  against  the 
other,  made  their  way  heavily  to  the  Dutch 
shore,  but  they  could  not  carry  all  the  crowd; 
there  were  tangled  masses  of  fugitives  on  foot 
on  the  east  bank  of  the  river.  They  hurried 
along,  pushing  before  them  their  carts,  their 
cattle,  and  an  extraordinary  number  of  baby- 
carriages,  laden  with  packages,  with  the  fine 
Flemish  babies  perched  on  top,  frightened, 
astonished,  but  quiet.  There  were  frequent 
stops  for  a  moment,  and  then  I  could  hear  the 
cooing  and  caressing  murmur  of  the  young 
mothers  as  they  bent  over  these  strange 
cradles  of  the  exodus.  I  recognized  the  lint- 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       39 

white  hair  and  the  placid  look  of  the  Flemish 
infants  who  are  shown  in  their  mothers'  arms 
in  pictures  of  the  kermesses.  These  babies 
were  just  like  them — ^fair,  rather  heavy  and 
unwieldy,  with  big  heads  under  tight-fitting 
caps.  I  did  not  then  understand  Flemish,  and 
the  mingled  voices  only  meant  to  me  a  cry  of 
fright.  In  the  crush  some  mothers  had  lost  the 
children  who  were  clinging  to  their  skirts: 
'  Mudder !  Mudder !  Brennen  !  Gebrannt ! ' 
Those  were  the  only  words  at  all  like  German 
that  I  could  distinguish.  With  their  flying  yel- 
low hair  the  young  women  seemed  to  have 
around  them  a  reflection  of  the  flames  which 
had  driven  them  from  home.  The  road  to  Hol- 
land was  still  bordered  by  its  tall  poplars; 
little  mills  on  the  flat  fields  still  stretched  out 
their  idle  sails;  there  were  corners  of  the 
countryside  still  untouched,  like  an  old  en- 
graving which  has  been  saved  from  a  fire. 

"Next  day  was  the  9th,  and  the  silence  of 
death  was  over  Antwerp;  it  was  a  broken  and 
empty  shell.  One  heard  only  the  howling  of 
hungry  dogs,  forgotten  in  the  deserted  houses. 
Then  I  saw  the  great  German  parade,  the 
tidal  wave — I  had  missed  it  at  Brussels.  I 
watched  it  with  the  curious  eyes  of  a  neutral 


40  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

and  a  war  correspondent;  it  pleased  me  to 
make  myself  a  judge  between  the  irresistible 
onrush  of  a  plethoric  body  which  announced 
that  it  was  cruel  and  unjust  after  the  manner 
of  divine  nature  and  the  little  nation  which 
was  covering  with  its  neutral  and  almost 
naked  body  its  neighbor,  France. 

"I  went  with  a  companion,  an  American 
like  myself,  to  a  window  from  which  we  could 
see  the  advancing  Germans.  The  impression 
of  numbers  and  force  was  overpowering.  As 
far  as  we  could  see  the  same  gray  flood  was 
spreading,  uninterrupted,  regular  and  silent, 
like  all  other  great  floods.  I  thought  of  those 
mystic  words  which  I  had  heard  pronounced 
at  Berlin,  about  the  Vocation'  of  the  Ger- 
man people,  and  their  Mestiny.'  Their  day 
had  come — ^they  were  advancing  like  a  great 
brazen'  serpent,  with  all  its  folds  uncoiled, 
slipping  forward  to  take  possession  of  the 
earth.  In  speaking  of  themselves  the  Germans 
showed  their  overweening  pride  by  using  the 
mighty  Bible  images  to  describe  their  own 
ambition.  They  liked  to  think  they  were  Mes- 
sianic figures,  but  their  Messiah  was  force. 

"Having  seen  them  at  a  distance  we  saw 
them  later  close  at  hand,  as  they  passed,  regi- 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       41 

ment  after  regiment,  down  the  broad  streets 
of  Antwerp.  Except  for  the  heavy  rumbling 
of  trucks  and  ammunition-wagons,  the  only 
sound  was  the  heavy  tramp  of  men's  boots, 
pounding  on  the  pavement.  One  gray  pack 
after  the  other  they  went  forward,  stopped, 
turned  the  corners  of  streets,  obeying  the  stri- 
dent orders  which  tore  through  the  air  like  a 
whip-lash. 

"The  whole  army  passed,  the  men  and 
their  complete  equipment:  guns,  caissons, 
camions,  each  regiment  followed  by  its  mov- 
ing kitchen,  with  smoke  coming  from  the 
chimneys.  After  the  odor  of  burning  houses 
we  were  to  have  the  smell  of  German  soup. 
That  was  meant  for  a  humorous  touch.  The 
soldiers  sat  on  the  kitchen-wagons,  swinging 
their  legs,  laughing  and  pretending  to  offer 
the  unctuous  steam  of  their  meat  to  the  closed 
windows  above  them.  Their  officers,  whether 
on  horseback  or  afoot,  directed  their  men  with 
the  stiffness  of  automata,  and  this  was  accen- 
tuated by  the  unusual  number  of  belts  and 
straps  with  which  they  were  accoutred.  Al- 
most all  had  on  their  chests  an  electric  lamp 
connected  with  a  little  electric  battery  in  their 
saddle-bag,  and  when  night  fell  they  amused 


42  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

themselves  by  making  its  light  blaze  out  from 
their  bodies.  Perhaps  they  thought  them- 
selves modern  replicas  of  the  Cyclops,  and 
that  this  uncommon  eye  was  at  the  same  time 
fabulous  and  original. 

"For  two  whole  days  the  wave  rolled  on. 
Here  you  call  the  invaders  Huns  and  Barba- 
rians, but  if  you  had  seen  them  as  we  did 
it  would  be  enough  to  say  Germans.  It  is  a 
mistake  to  think  that  they  are  primitive 
hordes,  with  a  lust  for  slaughter;  with  them 
relentlessness  is  a  calculated  result,  methodi- 
cally taught  and  reduced  to  rule,  as  torture 
was  in  the  Middle  Ages.  Their  conception  of 
war  is  an  amazing  combination  of  an  almost 
candid  idealism  and  a  realism  which  is  nothing 
short  of  voracious,  and  they  carry  it  out  by 
applying  the  same  exact  method  to  vast 
masses  of  men,  and  by  inculcating  in  these 
masses,  when  they  are  formed  into  armies,  a 
national  egotism  which  amounts  to  a  cold 
and  systematic  fanaticism — a  fanaticism  kept 
in  order  by  a  corporal." 

"When  we  say  Boche  or  Barbarian  or  Hun," 
interrupted  Daisy,  "it  is  because  we  are  try- 
ing to  find  a  new  name  for  an  invisible  enemy 
who  seems  to  be  everywhere,   like  evil  or 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       43 

pain.  In  1870  the  soldiers  and  the  people 
called  the  Germans  'Prussians.'" 

"And  when  we  say  Huns,"  said  Mrs. 
Felder,  "we  are  only  giving  them  the  name  of 
something  accursed;  we  speak  of  them  as  the 
old  Egyptians  did  of  the  locusts  and  the  pes- 
tilence— ^they  are  a  plague." 

"Well,"  Harder  went  on,  "let  us  say  that 
they  are  a  plague,  and  it  is  quite  correct  that 
their  dense  gray  masses  are  like  a  swarm  of 
fierce  migrating  locusts.  I  call  the  insects 
fierce  because  their  vast  numbers  and  their 
voracious  appetites  make  them  formidable;  I 
have  more  than  once  taken  two  or  three  of 
them  in  my  hand  and  found  them  quite  harm- 
less. Our  duties  in  the  C.  R.  B.  brought  us 
into  contact  with  some  officers  who  were  al- 
most good-natured.  We  had  to  arrange  with 
them  about  feeding  the  starving  people;  you 
should  have  heard  them,  fathers  of  families 
themselves,  talk  genially  about  'my  popula- 
tion,' as  if  there  was  no  cause  for  anything 
but  good-will  between  the  inhabitants  and 
the  invaders.  They  were  only  carrying  out 
orders,  and  we  felt  that  they  would  have 
shown  the  same  zeal — indeed,  they  acknowl- 
edged it — ^if  the  command  had  been  to  shoot 


44  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

the  same  people;  or  else  at  the  sound  of  a 
whistle,  without  changing  countenance,  they 
would  have  *  ordered  the  sack.'" 

"'Ordered  the  sack,"'  said  Mrs.  Felder, 
tapping  the  blue  carpet  with  her  impatient 
foot,  "I  don't  know  that  French  expression." 

"You  will  find  it  in  all  the  memoirs  of  the 
sixteenth  century,"  said  Harder,  "and  you 
may  be  sure  that  the  Germans  have  neat  lists 
in  their  files  of  all  tl  c  sacks  which  have  taken 
place  in  the  terrible  wars  of  past  centuries. 
To  'order  the  sack'  is  to  turn  over  a  city  or 
village  to  the  cupidity  and  bestiality  of  the 
soldiery.  The  sack  was  ordered  at  Malines, 
at  Louvain,  and  at  Aerschot.  Those  who  gave 
the  abominable  order  did  not  themselves  carry 
it  out,  and  those  who  did  could  always  plead 
that  they  were  obliged  to  obey,  and  in  this 
way  the  German  theory  of  collective  irrespon- 
sibility was  upheld." 

"But  then,"  said  Mrs.  Felder,  "if  they  are 
going  to  search  through  old  books  to  find 
examples  of  cruelty  in  the  past,  they  might 
just  as  well  burn  women  as  witches,  or  con- 
demn people  to  the  stake  if  they  happen  to 
hold  different  opinions." 

"That  is  pretty  nearly  correct,"  Harder 


Photograph  copyright  by  Underwood  and  Undencood. 

Herbert  Hoover,  President  of  the  C.  R.  B. 

(Commission  for  the  Relief  of  Invaded  Belgium  and  France.) 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       45 

answered.  "It  is  perfectly  true  that  if  we 
look  hard  enough  we  can  find  justification  for 
almost  anything  in  some  old  record  or  other/' 

"Let  us  go  back  to  the  locusts/'  said  Mrs. 
Felder,  "and  tell  us  more  about  them. 
When  once  they  had  descended  on  Belgium, 
did  they  eat  up  all  the  food  there  was?" — 
and  she  spread  out  her  fingers  nervously,  as 
if  to  avoid  touching  the  insects. 

"Exactly,'*  answered  Harder,  looking  at 
his  excited  questioner  with  the  characteristic 
little  smile  which  drew  up  the  corners  of  his 
lips.  "And  that  is  where  the  story  of  our 
C.  R.  B.  begins.'' 

"Oh,  but  we  don't  want  to  hear  it  yet," 
cried  Mrs.  Felder.  "We  want  more  of  your 
confession  as  a  neutral,  that  is  much  more 
interesting  this  evening.  We  want  to  know 
what  you  thought  of  the  Belgians  after  you 
had  seen  the  people  whom  you  call  Germans, 
but  which  I  shall  continue  to  call  Huns,  Bar- 
barians, and  locusts." 

"Ah,"  said  Harder,  "that's  a  long  story, 
and  I'm  afraid  I  shall  be  obliged  to  speak  of 
the  C.  R.  B.,  for  without  it  there  would  have 
been  no  more  Belgians — ^they  would  have  been 
exterminated  by  famine.  And  since  we  have 


46  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

mentioned  old  forms  of  torture,  I  may  say 
that  Belgium  and  the  north  of  France  were 
confined  in  an  iron  cage;  the  Germans  held 
the  padlock,  and  nothing  could  get  through 
the  bars,  not  even  a  letter  or  a  bit  of  bread. 

"Draw  a  line  around  the  front,  extend  it 
along  the  length  of  the  German  frontiers,  and 
within  it  you  will  have  the  prison  district  of 
the  war.  Almost  no  one  was  allowed  to  enter 
or  to  know  it  except  the  delegates  of  the 
C.  R.  B.,  and  within  that  circle  of  steel  ten 
millions  of  living  souls  asked  themselves  every 
day  the  heart-sickening  question:  'Shall  we 
die  of  hunger?'  Supplies  arrived  constantly 
from  Germany  for  the  troops,  but  they  were 
sacred;  they  were  to  feed  the  chosen  people, 
the  armies  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts.  Not  a 
grain  of  German  wheat  went  into  a  French  or 
Flemish  mouth;  we  were  only  able  to  arrange 
that  the  inhabitants  should  have  what  was 
grown  on  their  own  soil.  You  may  imagine 
how  much  could  be  raised  in  an  invaded  coun- 
try, and  on  ground  over  which  the  German 
armies  marched  forward  and  back  all  the 
time.  In  Belgium  the  armies  moved  on,  but  in 
France  they  remained  and  grew  ever  larger; 
millions  of  combatants  overspread  the  occu- 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       47 

pied  provinces.  How  the  French  managed  to 
keep  alive  until  our  food  supplies  could  reach 
them  must  remain  one  of  those  mysteries  of 
French  vitality  to  which  we  are  only  too  apt 
to  apply  the  comfortable  word  *  miraculous/ 
"Belgium  was  the  first  to  suffer;  the  first 
requisitions  squeezed  her  dry.  Her  industrial 
riches  were  very  great,  but  for  that  very  reason 
she  did  not  produce  much;  she  was  a  factory 
hand,  buying  her  bread  instead  of  baking  it. 
All  the  Belgian  industries  stopped  at  once. 
The  miners  no  longer  went  down  into  the 
bowels  of  the  earth  and  in  a  few  days  the 
evil  of  enforced  idleness  was  added  to  all  the 
others.  It  is  true  that  Germany  suffered,  or 
was  going  to  suffer,  from  the  blockade,  but 
she  put  her  utmost  energy  into  making  the 
most  of  her  resources,  and  at  the  same  time 
she  exhausted  or  ruined  the  territory  which 
she  had  seized.  At  one  time  she  asserted  the 
right  of  the  strong  when  she  requisitioned 
supplies,  and  at  another  she  pleaded  weak- 
ness, in  order  to  get  out  of  dealing  with  the 
food  problem.  The  argument  was  simple; 
since  England  had  blockaded  her  ports  Ger- 
many was  like  the  garrison  of  a  besieged  for- 
tress; she  had  barely  enough  for  herself.  It  is 


48  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R,  B. 

true  that  she  opened  stores  for  the  sale  of  pro- 
visions, but  only  Germans  were  allowed  to 
enter  and  buy,  and  in  the  autumn  of  19 14,  as 
the  unemployed  Belgian  workmen  stood  in 
line  waiting  their  turn  at  the  municipal  can- 
teens, they  could  see  piles  of  sauerkraut  and 
garlands  of  sausages  behind  the  brightly 
lighted  windows  of  the  German  stores.  But 
these  delicatessen  were  not  for  Belgians.  They 
were,  it  is  true,  helped  by  their  own  country- 
men— ^landowners,  bankers,  merchants,  man- 
ufacturers— all  the  rich  Belgians,  to  sum  them 
up  in  a  word.  And  they  were  splendid;  they 
led  their  people  through  the  desert,  as  Moses 
did  the  Hebrews  of  old.  You  know  how  much 
civic  pride  this  little  Belgian  nation  has  al- 
ways had.  It  is  a  historical  tradition  with 
them. 

"At  Brussels,  Antwerp,  Ghent,  Malines, 
Liege,  and  other  towns,  down  to  the  smallest, 
well-organized  charitable  associations  were  in 
existence  long  before  the  war,  supported  and 
harmoniously  administered  by  members  of  all 
classes  and  creeds,  nobility,  bourgeoisie.  Cath- 
olics, and  liberals.  Therefore,  when  it  became 
necessary,  their  canteens  and  soup-kitchens 
were  speedily  enlarged,  in  order  to  give  relief 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       49 

to  the  ever-increasing  number  of  the  unem- 
ployed. And  when  I  use  that  term  I  do  not 
mean  only  factory  hands  and  miners;  the  in- 
vasion stopped  a  whole  population  short  in 
whatever  work  it  was  doing,  whether  profes- 
sional or  manual. 

"It  was  not  only  the  working  classes  who 
suffered,  but  out  of  respect  for  the  misery 
which  shrinks  from  notice  I  will  say  no  more. 
Conditions  were  entirely  different  from  those 
of  a  strike  in  time  of  peace,  for  which  a  work- 
man or  artisan  might  be  supposed  to  be  more 
or  less  prepared.  In  many  cases  the  man  was 
in  the  prime  of  life,  and  usually  the  father  of  a 
large  family.  He  lived  in  one  of  those  Belgian 
villages  which  we  can  all  remember,  with  little 
houses  pressed  close  together  beside  the  broad 
highway,  each  with  its  glossy  roof,  shining 
windows,  and  tiny  garden  gay  with  holly- 
hocks, geraniums,  or  tulips.  These  houses  rep- 
resented Flemish  cleanliness,  healthfulness, 
and  a  certain  amount  of  leisure.  What  was  the 
daily  life  of  the  families  who  lived  in  them  ? 
Early  in  the  morning  the  father  went  off  to 
his  work  in  factory  or  mine  by  one  of  the  little 
tramway  lines  which  held  the  industrial  life  of 
Belgium  together.  His  wife,  the  *  housewife,' 


50  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

who  had  also  been  up  since  daylight,  pulled 
her  provision  of  vegetables  from  the  little  gar- 
den and  prepared  the  soup.  Milk,  eggs,  and 
meat  were  all  reasonably  cheap,  and  the 
chubby  children  could  have  their  fill  of  thickly 
buttered  bread.  Clothing  was  warm  and  shoes 
substantial;  life  in  Belgium  had  long  been  com- 
fortable, and  the  winters,  with  their  gray  skies 
and  steady  rains,  made  comforts  necessary. 
To  be  prosperous  was  the  national  habit  of 
Flanders.  If  Flemish  art  is  redundant,  giving 
us  a  picture  of  national  manners  which  is  al- 
most always  gay,  and  sometimes  overvigor- 
ous,  it  is  not  from  any  tradition  or  preference 
on  the  part  of  the  artists.  These  rollicking  jun- 
keters of  Teniers,  with  their  rubicund  noses; 
the  crowds  at  a  kermesse  pressing  around  a 
table  piled  with  succulent  victuals;  the  shouts 
of  laughter  which  we  can  almost  hear,  the  uni- 
versal jollity — all  show  the  delight  in  life  of  a 
healthy  and  well-fed  people. 

"I  remembered  all  that  as  I  watched  the 
Belgians  of  to-day,  menaced  with  starvation 
as  if  they  were  so  many  famine-struck  Hin- 
doos. At  Antwerp  especially,  when  I  saw  the 
unemployed  workmen  standing  on  their  door- 
steps still  smoking  their  pipes  but  with  their 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       51 

hands  hanging  idly  at  their  sides,  I  thought: 
'These  are  of  the  same  race  as  the  men  who 
saw  Rubens/  The  signs  of  suffering  had  al- 
ready begun  to  show;  their  clothes  hung 
loosely  on  their  stout  bodies,  they  dragged 
their  feet  as  they  walked,  and  their  eyes  were 
dull  and  listless.  The  'rich,'  the  masters  of  in- 
dustry, had  ceased  to  be  able  to  support  the 
soup-kitchens  and  canteens.  It  was  no  longer 
a  question  of  money;  the  circle  had  closed 
around  Belgium,  and  her  stores  were  used  up. 
The  time  had  come  when  it  was  absolutely 
essential  to  make  an  opening  through  which 
foodstuffs  could  come,  no  matter  how  much 
they  cost.  I  will  not  tell  you  how  we  managed 
it,  for  that  would  make  me  talk  too  much 
about  ourselves,"  he  said,  looking  at  his  com- 
panions. "The  Germans  were  always  ready  to 
explain  just  why  they  had  gone  to  war.  The 
Belgians  said  little,  but,  as  we  shared  their 
imprisonment,  we  grew  to  appreciate  the  no- 
bility of  their  resistance  and  the  extent  of 
their  sacrifices.  We  remembered  their  past 
history,  with  its  obstinate  struggles  for  free- 
dom; we  saw  the  glorious  records  of  their 
national  art  in  the  churches  and  the  Hotel  de 
Ville  of  Antwerp,  and  understood  as  we  had 


52  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

never  done  before  what  an  inspiration  it  is  to 
a  country  to  have  been  capable  of  producing 
great  art.  It  is  rather  characteristic  of  us 
Americans/'  with  another  glance  at  his  fellow 
countrymen,  "and  a  curious  and  enlightening 
experience,  to  begin  to  know  a  country  through 
its  art.  When  we  go  to  Europe  we  have  already 
in  our  minds  an  idealized  consciousness  of 
what  your  old  countries  gave  to  history  while 
we  were  yet  unborn,  and  we  are  even  more 
acutely  aware  than  you  are,  if  you  will  allow 
me  to  say  so,  of  how  great  a  part  so  small  a 
country  as  Belgium  has  had  not  only  in  mak- 
ing history  but  in  adding  beauty  to  the  world." 

"Belgium  is  like  a  little  shell  which  has  pro- 
duced a  splendid  pearl,"  said  Daisy. 

"Indeed,  yes,"  said  Harder.  "Of  course  I 
was  obliged  to  admire  the  German  armies  and 
the  German  administration,  but  this  pearl, 
gleaming  with  the  iridescence  of  centuries, 
which  they  wished  to  crush,  seemed  to  me  in- 
finitely more  beautiful  and  precious.  I  loved 
Antwerp,  and  as  I  wandered  about  its  old 
quarters  I  thought  all  the  time  of  Rubens,  for 
Antwerp  is  his  city.  Four  of  his  large  engrav- 
ings hung  on  the  walls  of  my  father's  study, 
and  he  also  had  many  prints  in  portfolios. 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       53 

When  I  was  a  schoolboy,  many  a  time  he 
showed  and  explained  them  to  me  during  the 
long  hours  of  orthodox  Protestant  Sundays, 
and  as  he  passed  his  fingers  in  a  light  caress 
over  their  flowing  lines  I  could  hear  him  say 
to  himself:  *  There  is  nothing  greater.'  That  is 
one  of  the  memories  of  my  childhood. 

"At  the  time  I  did  not  know  just  what  he 
meant,  but  when  we  are  grown  we  understand 
what  in  childhood  we  only  feel.  I  hope  I  shall 
not  offend  my  compatriots  by  saying  that 
there  is  not  much  artistic  beauty  in  America; 
we  are,  therefore,  all  the  more  appreciative  of 
whatever  brings  us,  from  afar,  visions  which 
are  lacking  in  our  daily  life.  I  was  especially 
attracted  by  Flemish  art  because  it  could  be 
either  dashing  and  impetuous  or  tenderly  sim- 
ple and  homely;  and  the  Belgians  whom  I  saw 
overwhelmed  by  misfortune  were  not  to  me 
only  a  small  nation  almost  annihilated  by 
heavy  artillery,  as  ants  might  be  by  a  heavy 
foot;  they  belonged  to  a  people  who  had  had 
a  soul,  and  who  had  it  still." 

**  What  do  you  mean  by  their  ^soul'  ?"  asked 
Mrs.  Felder. 

"The  soul  of  a  people,"  said  Harder,  "is 
that  spirit  which  enables  them,  whether  great 


54  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

or  small,  to  create  something  which  is  their 
own,  and  only  theirs.  If  a  nation  has  done  that 
it  acquires  thereby  a  grandeur,  in  a  spiritual 
sense,  which  is  a  sort  of  consecration." 

"It  is  true,"  said  Daisy,  "that  we  speak 
more  often  of  the  soul  of  a  small  nation  than 
of  a  greater  one — ^we  say  'the  soul  of  Greece' 
more  often  than  'the  soul  of  Rome.'" 

"That  is  because  a  great  nation,"  said 
Harder,  "has  usually  absorbed  various  con- 
flicting elements  which  have  tended  to  hamper 
the  development  of  its  particular  spirit.  But 
at  every  turn  we  felt  the  soul  of  Flanders,  and 
we  who  come  from  vaster  countries,  where  we 
have  been  used  to  space  and  strength,  cannot 
fail  to  respect,  and  I  may  even  say  to  venerate, 
the  spirit  which  has  labored  so  diligently  and 
has  given  so  much  beauty  to  the  world.  Those 
long  lines  of  unemployed  Belgian  workmen 
waiting  in  the  freezing  dusk  of  autumn  and 
winter  for  the  soup  doled  out  to  them  by 
charity — ^how  unutterably  dreary  they  were ! 
I  watched  them  often,  and  recognized  the 
same  quality  of  flesh,  the  coloring  of  skin,  the 
shades  of  fair  hair,  the  glistening  eyes,  which 
have  been  fixed  in  our  minds  forever  by  the 
power  of  a  great  art.  .  .  .  One  more  recol- 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       55 

lection — it  shall  be  the  last.  It  is  of  a  winter 
evening  in  a  church  at  Antwerp.  A  group  of 
women  and  children  who  had  taken  refuge 
from  the  cold  outside  were  huddled  close  to- 
gether, reciting  the  rosary  before  an  image  of 
the  Virgin.  A  cluster  of  burning  tapers  made 
a  zone  of  golden  light  around  them  among  the 
icy  shadows  of  the  church,  revealing  at  the 
same  time  a  large  altar-piece  of  the  Nativity 
by  Van  Eyck.  Little  trembling  flames  threw 
their  uncertain  gleams  over  picture  and  wor- 
shippers, and  I  scarcely  knew  which  Belgians 
were  painted  on  the  canvas  and  which  were 
kneeling  on  the  cold  marble,  cheating  their 
gnawing  hunger  by  reciting  the  rosary  in 
Flemish  with  their  patient  voices.  It  was  noth- 
ing, if  you  like — only  the  impression  of  a  mo- 
ment. But  when  one  has  felt  such  impressions 
every  day,  at  a  time  when  the  question  ^to  be 
or  not  to  be'  is  pressing  on  a  whole  nation,  one 
comes  to  understand  that  such  a  people,  from 
what  they  are  themselves  and  from  what  their 
history  has  been,  have  a  reason  and  a  right  to 
live.  Their  claim  to  justice  shines  from  the 
eyes  of  the  smallest  and  humblest — ^those  soft, 
frank  eyes  of  the  Belgian  children.  Of  course 
as  a  liberal  and  a  neutral  I  knew  this  before- 


56  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

hand,  but  when  I  came  to  live  among  those 
defenseless,  silent,  patient  Belgians,  my  knowl- 
edge became  less  abstract." 

"'It  is  certainly  true,"  said  Daisy,  "that 
there  is  one  lesson  which  we  Americans  can 
only  learn  in  Europe,  and  that  is  how  much  a 
country  stands  for  which  we  call  'little,'  but 
which  has  a  long  past  behind  it  to  which  it 
has  been  true.  You  have  learned  that  in  Bel- 
gium, and  I  am  learning  it  in  France.  In  fact," 
she  added  with  an  amused  smile,  "I  learned  it 
in  one  day  in  my  little  Lorraine  village." 

Harder  bowed  with  slightly  ironical  cour- 
tesy. '*  Women  always  learn  so  much  faster 
than  men."  And  then  he  added  seriously: 
"You  ladies  are  inquisitive.  You  want  to  know 
what  are  the  impressions  of  a  man  who  has 
spent  two  years  and  a  half  among  the  Ger- 
mans, having  been  thrown  more  particularly 
with  their  officers,  the  famous  German  'organ- 
izers,' and  also  among  the  Belgians.  Let  us 
put  it  that  he  has  known  what  are  at  present 
the  victors  and  the  vanquished.  His  impres- 
sions must  necessarily  be  complex,  and  at 
times  even  puzzling.  It  is  true  that  we  admired 
the  German  army  as  it  flowed  past  us,  appar- 
ently as  inexhaustible  as  a  mighty  river,  but 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       57 

at  the  same  time  our  hearts  were  filled  with 
admiration  of  a  different  sort  for  the  Belgians. 
In  reading  the  other  day  an  old  volume  of 
Montaigne  which  belonged  to  my  father,  I 
came  across  a  sentence  which  reminded  me  of 
what  the  neutrals  felt  who  were  shut  up  in  the 
invaded  districts  with  the  Germans.  Mon- 
taigne said,  playing  with  an  intellectual  truth 
in  his  liberal  fashion:  'I  could  readily  find 
myself  at  home  among  those  who  have  a  mind 
to  light  one  taper  to  the  Virgin  and  another 
to  the  Dragon.'  The  dragon,  the  brazen  ser- 
pent, was  splendid  in  his  pride  when  he  came 
down  from  the  heights  upon  Waelhem,  Con- 
tich,  and  Waerloos,  raising  clouds  of  dust  and 
spreading  abroad  his  infernal  odors  of  sulphur 
and  naphtha.  Hell  must  smell  like  burning 
villages.  Our  hearts  were  wrung  with  pity 
for  the  Belgians,  but  they  were  as  little  hunted 
animals  beside  the  great  Beast,  and  the  Beast 
was  a  magnificent  monster.'' 

"So  that  day,"  said  Daisy,  "the  taper 
would  have  been  lighted  for  the  Dragon  ?" 

"Well,"  answered  Harder,  "if  I  must  con- 
fess the  truth,  I  will  admit  that  on  that  day 
the  dragon  would  have  had  his  taper." 

"What  was  it  made  you  feel  most  for  the 


58  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

Belgians?"  went  on  Daisy  relentlessly.  "Was 
it  that  you  admired  their  moral  strength  or 
that  you  pitied  their  weakness  ?" 

**I  can  answer  you/'  said  Harder,  "in  the 
words  of  old  Montaigne.  The  next  taper  would 
be  for  the  Virgin  with  her  sandalled  foot  upon 
the  Dragon's  head.  And  now  it  is  my  turn  to 
ask  a  question:  Which  do  you  admire  most  in 
the  little  virgin,  her  strength  or  her  weak- 
ness ?" 

"If  the  little  virgin  with  her  soft  eyes  and 
fair  hair  is  Flanders,"  said  Mrs.  Felder,  "we 
will  fall  on  our  knees  to  light  her  taper,  which 
is  more  than  Montaigne  thought  of  doing." 

"Very  true,"  said  Harder,  "but  Montaigne 
was  not  thinking  of  Belgium.  What  we  may 
be  sure  of  is  that  the  resistance  of  a  small  and 
weak  nation,  whose  very  life  is  threatened, 
who  is  dragged  to  the  pillory  because  she  dares 
to  say,  *I  exist  and  I  have  a  soul,'  has  a  sacred- 
ness  to  which  mere  strength  can  never  attain. 
Belgium  confessed  her  belief  in  herself.  She 
was  like  the  bending  reed — ^but  a  reed  en- 
dowed with  the  power  of  thought." 

"When  I  was  among  them  I  often  thought 
of  the  blatant  manner  in  which  the  Germans 
proclaim  their  'biological  superiority.'  It  is 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       59 

a  well-known  theme,  the  leit-motiv  of  the  war. 
They  reason  like  naturalists,  as  if  we  human 
beings  were  governed  by  the  laws  of  the  ani- 
mal world,  in  which  one  species  preys  upon 
another,  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest,  in  a 
sort  of  hierarchical  progression.  How  many 
times,  after  our  conversations  with  the  officers 
who  went  with  us  on  our  rounds  of  inspection 
as  delegates  of  the  C.  R.  B.  I  asked  myself 
the  question  which  they  have  answered  so 
boldly,  and  one  day  I  said  to  one  of  them: 
*But  look  here — after  all,  you  know,  we  are 
not  insects.' 

"Is  the  history  of  nations  really  no  more 
than  what  we  call  natural  history?  That  is 
their  war  dogma;  they  have  framed  it  upon 
the  cruel  laws  of  nature,  and  by  a  strange  and 
inadmissible  contradiction  they  constantly 
call  upon  God  to  carry  out  a  plan  from  which 
the  very  idea  of  God  is  left  out.'' 

"That  is  because  they  give  to  their  leaders," 
said  Daisy,  "the  manual  of  the  materialist, 
and  to  their  people  the  gebetbuch  of  the  pietist. 
I  have  seen  these  little  gebetbuchs  of  the  Ger- 
man soldiers;  little  black  books,  all  alike, 
picked  up  in  the  trenches,  stained  with  blood. 
They  would  be  touching  in  their  fervor  of 


60  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

obedient  love  toward  the  Kaiser  and  their 
princes  if  one  did  not  know  that  the  'military 
caste/  as  you  say,  had  composed  them  as  a 
sort  of  drug,  a  pious  elixir  to  sweeten  the  sol- 
diers' sacrifice/' 

"You  have  seen  the  gebetbuchsj"  said  Har- 
der, "  and  when  we  were  rolling  in  motor-cars 
along  the  roads  where  the  lines  of  dead  vil- 
lages stretched  out  like  a  street  of  tombs,  I 
have  often  seen  German  officers  take  out  of 
their  pockets  noxious  pamphlets  in  which 
these  theories  of  biological  superiority  were 
presented  in  various  forms,  sometimes  the 
most  unexpected,  in  order  to  justify  destruc- 
tion and  .  .  ." 

"And  cruelty,"  said  Mrs.  Felder. 

"They  made  us  read  these  new  gospels,  and 
we  discussed  them;  it  was  interesting  to  under- 
stand them  and  to  be  allowed  to  hear  them 
explain  their  inmost  convictions  coolly,  quiet- 
ly, and  almost  intimately.  A  little  German 
hauptmann  who  has  that  cerebral  dynamite  in 
his  pocket  will  burn  a  city,  and  make  a  bon- 
fire of  the  old  books  of  Louvain  as  unconcern- 
edly as  he  has  seen  his  father  smoke  out  a 
swarm  of  bees.  The  honey  of  the  world  has 
been  made  in  order  that  Germany  may  enjoy 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       61 

it.  You  know  their  formula — ^you  have  heard 
it  a  hundred  times.  Their  might  gives  them 
the  right,  and  the  right  of  others  is  subject  to 
perpetual  revision  by  this  might  of  theirs. 
But  I  do  not  want  to  weary  you  with  these 
axioms,  which  are  old  stories  here;  they  only 
surprised  us  Americans  so  much  because  our 
own  national  structure  is  so  liberal." 

He  went  up  to  the  large  rosewood  bookcase 
in  front  of  which  a  row  of  little  green  baskets 
of  various  shapes,  made  of  Indian  grasses, 
gave  out  their  strange  scent,  and,  taking  out 
a  volume,  said:  "I  saw  this  book,  which  I 
have  read.  Don't  be  afraid,  I  will  only  read 
one  line,  the  first,  because  I  have  often  ap- 
plied it  to  myself.  Here  it  is.  Heine  says: 
'Formerly  the  most  complete  ignorance  ex- 
isted in  France  in  regard  to  intellectual  Ger- 
many— an  ignorance  which  was  disastrous  in 
time  of  war.' "  And  he  shut  the  book  quickly, 
as  if  in  fear  of  being  caught  delivering  a  lec- 
ture. "This  book  is  now  nearly  eighty  years 
old,  and  I  don't  know  that  we  have  made 
much  progress  since.  We  did  not  know  how 
Germany  had  come  to  put  herself  in  the 
place  of  God,  to  deify  and  worship  herself; 
her  appetites  are  only  a  manifestation  of  her 


62  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

strength.  She  is  the  Old  God,  to  be  sure,  but 
still  she  is  God,  the  living  God,  whether 
pervading  the  German  army,  or  in  the  gebet- 
buchsy  the  biological  pamphlets,  the  history, 
philosophy,  and  poetry  of  Germany,  in  the  lit- 
tle blue  flowers  which  bloom  in  every  German 
heart — even  down  to  German  beer  in  German 
stomachs,  and  the  imposing  number  of  the 
herds  of  German  hogs  on  their  farms.  It  is 
part  of  the  religious  training  of  every  German 
to  worship  Germany  in  his  own  person,  and 
Germany  worships  herself  in  each  of  her 
creatures." 

"Then  in  that  case,"  said  Daisy,  "it  is  a 
sort  of  national  pantheism  V^ 

"Yes,  more  or  less,"  answered  Harder. 

Daisy  went  on:  "But  where  did  this  doc- 
trine originate  ?  Did  the  philosophers  make  a 
nation  of  fanatics  ?  Or  did  ambitious  political 
leaders  make  use  of  the  philosophers  ?" 

"That  is  hard  for  me  to  answer,"  said 
Harder.  "It  is  an  old  secret  of  national  chem- 
istry, which  has  been  working  itself  out  slowly 
through  the  ages.  We  did  not  know  Germany," 
he  repeated  sadly.  "She  was  protected  against 
us  by  her  nebulous  philosophy,  which  we  be- 
lieved to  be  entirely  speculative,  as  a  beast  of 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       63 

prey  is  protected  by  the  mystery  of  the  jun- 
gle. Remember  the  many  university  centres 
throughout  Germany;  I  am  incHned  to  think 
that  it  was  there,  among  those  purely  intel- 
lectual surroundings,  that  this  doctrine  was 
born.  Even  the  most  savage  idea  seems  inno- 
cent while  it  is  only  an  idea,  a  sort  of  violent 
exercise  of  the  mind.  And  for  all  their  self- 
worship  there  was  much  that  the  Germans 
failed  to  understand.  They  had  their  rich 
poetry,  their  incomparable  music,  their  his- 
tory, so  old  that  its  beginnings  were  lost  in 
fable,  their  language,  which  eluded  us  even 
when  we  thought  we  understood  it,  in  which 
we  pursued  a  thought,  a  verb  which  hid  itself 
away,  or  an  idea  which  burrowed  in  the  earth 
like  a  mole  before  we  could  grasp  it.  Ah,"  said 
Harder,  stamping  his  foot,  "we  were  not  able 
to  fathom  them.  They  lived  within  them- 
selves; what  they  did  not  understand  they 
ignored,  not  only  from  lack  of  comprehension 
but  from  pride.  They  were  self-sufficient,  self- 
adoring.  It  was  a  sort  of  metaphysical  perver- 
sion, and,  as  they  are  practical,  they  proceeded 
naturally  from  brutal  metaphysics  to  brutal 
deeds." 

*'And  that  was  the  way,"  said  Daisy,  "in 


64  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

which    *  Weltanschauung'   became    *WeItzer- 
storung/" 

She  spoke  in  a  pedantic  tone,  and  Harder 
looked  at  her  with  surprise.  "Some  ideas  can 
only  be  expressed  in  the  language  which  cre- 
ated them/'  she  said.  "I  have  never  tried  to 
translate  that  word  'Weltanschauung/  so  fa- 
miliar to  all  Germans,  and  when  one  pro- 
nounces it  one  must  look  as  though  one  under- 
stood philosophy."  And  speaking  again  in  her 
natural  voice  she  added:  "All  of  which  re- 
minds me  that  I  read  the  othei  day  a  letter 
which  is  very  old  now,  from  a  traveller  who 
was  young  when  it  was  written.  The  date  was 
1 84 1,  and  he  was  twenty.  He  had  gone  to 
make  a  poetic  and  philosophic  pilgrimage  to 
Heidelberg,  standing  among  its  lime-trees  on 
the  bank  of  the  Neckar.  He  loved  German 
poetry  and  German  thought,  and  he  wanted 
to  drink  them  at  their  source,  but  In  writing 
to  his  friend  Quinet  he  spoke  with  bitter  dis- 
illusionment of  the  'murderous  idealism  which 
fills  this  country  with  phantoms.'  He  went  to 
lectures  given  by  peaceful  professors  in  spec- 
tacles, and  heard  them  say  that  'life  had 
withdrawn  from  France,  and  had  entered  into 
the  Germanic  body.' " 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       65 

''Notice  those  words,  'the  Germanic  body,"' 
said  Harder.  "For  a  long  time  they  have  ex- 
pressed what  was  the  greatest  aim  of  the 
nation." 

"This  traveller,  who  was  a  friend  of  my 
family,  delivered  his  letters  of  introduction  to 
certain  hospitable  families.  He  was  invited  to 
dine,  and  after  evenings  of  intimacy  during 
which  (as  with  your  professors  at  Berlin)  the 
sincere  convictions  of  his  companions  came 
out  with  the  smoke  of  their  pipes,  he  wrote 
again  to  his  friend:  'German  society  has  be- 
come a  mob  of  fanatics.' " 

"Society!"  said  Harder.  "You  see  the 
poisoned  current,  coming  from  far  off,  did  not 
slacken.  Society,"  he  repeated,  "that  is  to  say, 
the  company  in  the  drawing-rooms  and  sitting- 
rooms  of  the  little  German  ladies,  the  women 
whom  we  praised  as  candid  and  naive  Char- 
lottes and  Gretchens,  with  neatly  braided 
tresses  and  eyes  like  forget-me-nots;  society — 
the  poets,  the  musicians,  the  young  officers 
who  danced  with  the  Charlottes  to  the  lan- 
guid and  enchanting  rhythm  of  the  German 
waltzes;  a  mob  of  fanatics !  I  can  understand 
it — and  I  too,"  he  went  on,  "have  seen  in  old 
portfolios  the  correspondence  of  French  fami- 


66  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

lies;  only  a  few  days  ago  I  was  reading  some 
letters  of  a  Frenchman,  also  written  from 
Heidelberg,  but  this  time  the  date  was  1870. 
His  notes,  intimately  jotted  down,  are  inter- 
esting. He  came  and  went,  he  asked  questions 
and  talked,  without  any  misgiving,  and  was 
disagreeably  surprised  one  evening,  when  he 
had  been  invited  to  dine  and  hear  his  hostess 
sing  some  *lieder,'  to  receive  a  stunning  blow 
from  his  host.  The  war  of  1870,  which  fell  like 
a  thunderbolt  in  France,  was  part  of  the 
every-day  thought  of  the  'intellectuals.'  It 
bubbled  up  in  their  talk  like  the  froth  in  their 
beer-mugs.  And,  oddly  enough,  it  was  the 
'intellectuals'  in  other  parts  of  Europe  who 
refused  to  believe  that  there  could  be  a  war 
until  it  had  broken  out.  There  was  a  contra- 
diction of  ideas;  the  German  brain  had  been 
pursuing  a  dream  for  a  century — and  when 
Germany  dreams,  it  is  a  nightmare  for  the 
rest  of  the  world. 

"It  was  a  dream  which  was  misleading,  be- 
cause with  your  thinkers,  as  with  ours,  intel- 
lectual speculations  are  disinterested.  Your  in- 
tellectuals rejected  the  idea  of  war,  while  the 
German  intellectuals  were  hatching  it.  French 
thought  is  universal;  in  a  certain  sense  it  is 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       67 

Catholic;  German  thought  had  become  schis- 
matic; it  was  only  German.  ...  I  remember 
my  father's  love  for  Germany;  he  also  would 
willingly  have  gone  there  on  a  pilgrimage.  He 
knew  nothing  of  Germany  except  her  poetry, 
and  when  he  was  tired,  at  the  end  of  a  hard 
day,  he  would  take  up  his  Uhland  and  his 
Schiller.  When  he  said  'Germany'  it  was  with 
a  pleased  and  restful  smile.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  he  thought  of  her  as  an  old  goddess  who 
was  very  close  to  nature,  full  of  legend  and 
of  song.  .  .  .  But  those  who  made  the  pil- 
grimage and  brought  flowers  to  the  old  god- 
dess only  found  her  high-priest,  who  explained 
her  divine  right  to  devour  mortals." 

"I  can  give  you  another  saying  of  a  French- 
man," said  Daisy.  "He  was  not  altogether  an 
intellectual,  but  rather  a  man  of  action,  a 
diplomat  who  has  still  a  hard  task  on  his 
hands.  I  met  him  just  ten  years  ago  in  a  draw- 
ing-room; I  can  see  him  now,  standing  up  to 
take  his  leave;  I  was  astonished  to  hear  him 
say  in  a  grave  tone,  and  as  one  speaks  who 
has  authority:  'You  may  believe  me  when  I 
say  that  Germany  is  advancing  upon  France 
with  the  weight  and  regularity  of  a  glacier.' 
I   was   much   struck   by   the   impression   of 


68  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

amazement,  and,  if  I  may  say  so,  of  fatality, 
which  these  words  left  upon  their  hearers, 
when  spoken  so  gravely  by  a  man  whose 
whole  business  in  life  was  to  know  what  was 
happening  in  the  world." 

"If  we  look  back  from  one  landmark  to 
another,  across  wide  intervals,  we  may  per- 
ceive that  it  is  as  if  an  illness  had  been  com- 
ing on  for  a  century,  or  even  longer;  it  would 
be  interesting  for  a  political  physician  to  fol- 
low its  course  more  closely.  He  could  distin- 
guish forces  made  from  a  combination  of  pride 
and  humiliation.  If  we  look  back  now  on  these 
premonitory  symptoms,  it  is  because  we  have 
had  but  little  time  for  psychological  study 
during  the  last  two  years  and  a  half  spent  in 
France  and  Belgium  as  guests  of  the  Germans. 
Now  that  America  has  come  into  the  war  it 
will  be  our  turn,  and  good  for  us  to  think 
things  out  and  to  look  our  enemies  dispas- 
sionately in  the  face;  I  say  dispassionately, 
because  the  more  calmly  we  undertake  this 
war,  being  aware  in  our  inmost  consciousness 
of  the  formidable  thrust  against  which  we  are 
prepared  to  throw  our  weight,  the  stronger  we 
shall  be,  and  the  more  fruitful,  therefore,  our 
aid.  If  only  we  could  also  look  in  the  same 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       69 

way  at  Germany — ^if  we  could  see  into  the 
depths  of  her  mind  !" 

"Tell  us  something,  Mr.  Harder,"  said  Mrs. 
Felder  quickly.  "You  said  that  you  had  been 
in  *a  tragic  engagement.'  Did  you  see  any 
atrocities  V  She  looked  at  him  with  her  wide- 
open  eyes;  they  were  gray,  flecked  with  gold, 
reminding  one  of  the  hush  and  mystery  in  the 
great  eyes  of  nocturnal  birds. 

"I  have  seen — ^we  have  seen,"  said  Harder, 
"the  atrocity  of  a  system.  But  remember  that 
saying  of  Macbeth's:  'I  have  supped  full  with 
horrors.'  Now  that  our  country  is  going  into 
war  our  sight  must  not  be  obscured  by  blood. 
I  have  been  a  neutral,  a  neutral  who  was 
obliged  more  than  once,  in  order  to  do  his 
duty,  to  be  blind,  deaf,  and  dumb.  We  were 
only  hands,  which  had  to  be  steady  in  order 
to  distribute  food  intelligently  in  districts 
threatened  day  by  day  with  starvation.  If  we 
had  seen  what  we  were  not  meant  to  see,  said 
what  we  were  not  meant  to  say,  heard  what 
we  were  not  meant  to  hear,  our  mission  would 
have  come  to  an  end  at  once." 

"But  hands  speak  sometimes,"  said  Mrs. 
Felder,  looking  at  Harder  with  her  mysteri- 
ous eyes. 


70  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

"Now  Nettie  Bell,"  said  Daisy,  speaking  of 
Mrs.  Felder  by  her  Christian  name,  "is  going 
to  make  us  guess  one  of  her  riddles." 

"Not  at  all,"  said  Mrs.  Felder  impetuously. 
"Mr.  Harder,"  she  repeated  in  an  even  voice 
and  with  a  quiet  smile,  "don't  you  remember 
the  hands — ^I  think  they  were  invisible — ^which 
traced  certain  words  on  a  wall — and  old  Bel- 
shazzar  trembled  when  he  saw  them.  The 
words  were  written  in  letters  of  fire — I  remem- 
ber that  when  we  had  that  lesson  in  our  Bible 
class  we  had  to  underline  those  words,  'in 
letters  of  fire.'"  And  she  raised  her  hand,  with 
its  shining  nails,  and  made  the  gesture  as  if 
writing  in  the  air. 

"We  Americans,  we  are  going  to  write  those 
words!"  she  said.  Taking  from  one  of  us  a 
lighted  cigarette,  she  repeated  her  gesture  as 
if  writing  on  the  blue-silk  wall  of  the  room. 
"In  letters  of  fire,"  she  said  again  passionately. 

The  quick  light  way  in  which  she  moved 
and  her  short  black  dress  shadowed  with  airy 
tulle  made  her  look  almost  like  a  spirit  her- 
self. "Well,  Mr.  Harder,"  she  said,  "now  that 
you  have  supped  full  with  horrors  you  are 
going  back  to  the  United  States." 

"No,"  said  Harder,  "my  travelling  is  over; 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       71 

and  he  added  in  a  lower  tone,  blushing  a  little, 
"I  am  going  to  join  the  colors.  We  are  not  free 
to  speak;  a  whole  people  is  still  there,  hostages 
for  any  imprudent  words,  but  fortunately  we 
may  fight." 

"You  are  going  to  join  the  army?  Well, 
then,  I  am  going  to  sing,"  she  said  in  a  whim- 
sical tone,  yet  her  voice  sounded  as  though  she 
were  making  an  effort  to  refrain  from  tears. 
She  opened  the  piano  and  her  hands  wandered 
over  the  keys  in  vague  harmonies.  Then  she 
began  to  sing  under  her  breath  a  strain  which 
began  uncertainly,  as  if  stammered  in  a  dream, 
and  then  suddenly  developed  into  a  song  which 
filled  the  room  with  what  seemed  the  monoto- 
nous and  piercing  cry  of  a  child  wakened  from 
its  sleep  in  a  night  of  terror. 

It  was  the  *' Christmas  of  the  Belgian  Chil- 
dren," by  Debussy.  She  went  through  it  with- 
out accompaniment,  standing  up.  All  at  once, 
with  one  of  those  rapid  and  rhythmical  move- 
ments which  always  suggested  dancing,  and  as 
if  she  were  made  nervous  by  being  looked  at, 
she  turned  off  the  electric  light  and  finished 
her  singing  in  the  dark.  There  was  nothing  to 
be  seen  of  her  save  the  shining  of  her  eyes  and 
the  gleam  of  her  little  gold  shoes. 


72  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

Into  the  pitiful  cry  of  alarm  she  put  all  the 
horror  and  pity  which  filled  her  soul,  and 
could  not  be  expressed  in  any  calmer  fashion. 
Then,  as  she  turned  on  the  light  and  stood 
once  more  under  the  familiar  glow  of  the  white 
lamp-shade,  she  said  with  a  sad  smile:  "I 
don't  know  how  to  discourse,  and  I  don't 
know  how  to  work;  that  is  all  I  know  how  to 
do  for  the  war — ^to  sing,  like  the  ^cigale'  in  the 
fable." 

At  that  moment  the  door  opened  and  old 
Jean's  perplexed  countenance  appeared  again. 
Harder  rose  quickly  to  his  feet,  and  bowed 
before  Mrs.  Felder  to  take  his  leave. 

"Au  revoir,  soldier  of  the  right,"  she  said 
smilingly,  but  with  a  touch  of  emotion  in  her 
voice. 

"Oh,"  said  Daisy,  with  her  somewhat  aus- 
tere fervor.  "Soldier  of  the  right — ^but  also 
soldier  of  justice." 

No  one  spoke.  She  went  on  insistently: 
"The  triumph  of  right  implies  victory,  but 
that  of  justice  implies  and  calls  for  punish- 
ment." Then  she  added,  her  voice  low  and 
constrained :  "  Men  have  established  right,  but 
it  is  God  who  does  justice." 

"Bravo!"  said  Mrs.  Felder.  "Our  Daisy  is 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       73 

becoming  epigrammatic.  Daisy,  if  you  begin 
to  enunciate  formulas,  you  will  marry  a 
Frenchman!" 

"Well,"  said  Daisy,  "that  will  be  yet  an- 
other way  of  making  war !"  And  as  she  broke 
into  her  clear  laughter,  the  little  close  white 
teeth  fairly  shone.  "I  am  in  love  with  France !" 

How  beautiful  the  night  was,  after  the  se- 
rene ending  of  the  day !  We  walked  up  the 
Avenue  of  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  with  Daisy, 
and  with  the  same  Harder  whom  I  had  met 
for  the  first  time  only  an  hour  ago.  The  acacias 
shed  the  pungent  perfume  of  their  first  blos- 
soming, and  high  up  among  dense  masses  of 
foliage  the  horse-chestnut  flowers  stood  out 
like  white  tapers  in  the  twilight  of  a  church. 
The  wide  avenue  was  almost  empty,  and 
slowly  falling  into  the  silence  which  gives  to 
night  its  dignity.  The  heavy  mass  of  the  Arc 
de  Triomphe  reared  its  exact  lines  in  the  pearl- 
gray  shadows,  the  arch  itself  full  of  a  deeper 
black.  We  passed  on;  the  ground  sloped  gently 
downward,  and,  like  a  quiet  river  between  its 
banks,  the  avenue  stretched  out,  dotted  with 
its  lights  on  either  side. 

"When  one  comes  from  where  I  have  been. 


74  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

and  is  going  where  I  am  to  go/'  said  Harder, 
"the  beauty  of  Paris  seems  almost  unimagina- 
ble." 

"You  are  leaving  us  soon  ?"  I  said. 

"Most  probably/'  he  answered.  "For  my 
part,  I  am  not  like  public  opinion  in  America 
— ^I  do  not  need  to  be  prepared.  When  one  has 
spent  two  years  and  a  half  in  Belgium  and  in 
your  invaded  provinces,  one  may  not  know 
how  to  make  war,  but  at  least  one  knows  the 
reason  for  making  it.  For  conscience's  sake — 
and  with  us  each  man  likes  to  reason  with  his 
own  conscience,  by  himself — and  that,  after 
all,  is  the  essential  point.  I  wish,"  he  added,  as 
he  led  us  with  his  brisk  walk,  "that  all  my 
compatriots  at  home,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic,  could  have  seen  what  we  have.  It 
would  be  like  having  permission  to  go  into  the 
beyond  before  taking  one  side  or  another  in 
life.  They  would  all  have  the  faith  that  moves 
mountains — and  they  would  stand  in  need  of 
it. 

"I  think  of  my  country — and  although  I  find 
Paris  beautiful — so  beautiful ! — ^I  should  very 
much  like  to  be  transported  to-night  to  one  of 
our  great  farms  in  the  West.  To  the  men  out 
there,  in  those  vast  spaces  where  they  have 
no  longer  to  struggle  against  nature,  any  more 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       75 

than  against  mankind,  war  will  be  a  new 
idea !  Here  you  have  always  been  threatened; 
there  are  globules  of  defense  in  all  French 
blood.  But  with  us  it  is  different.  You  have 
found  us  slow  to  awaken,  slow  to  come,  but 
you  cannot  know  how  faint  and  feeble  the  rip- 
ples of  war  have  become  by  the  time  they 
reach  our  shores.  The  New  World  has  pros- 
pered out  there,  between  its  two  oceans,  by 
following  an  ideal  of  labor  and  of  peace. 

"And  the  European  wars — old  quarrels 
reaching  back  into  centuries  of  which  we 
knew  little  or  nothing — did  not  interfere  in 
the  least  with  either  our  toil  or  our  tranquilli- 
ty. I  have  relatives  who  until  a  few  years  ago 
knew  almost  nothing  about  Europe.  The 
portion  of  the  earth  which  has  fallen  to  their 
share  is  quite  sufficient  to  take  up  all  their 
energy — and  a  lack  of  energy  is  not  among 
their  faults.  They  can  walk  for  days  on  their 
own  land  without  meeting  an  'enemy,'  or 
even  a  neighbor.  I  wish  they  were  here  al- 
ready, but  I  also  wish  you  could  see  them  in 
their  own  homes,  for  then  you  would  under- 
stand what  a  stupendous  adventure  it  is  for 
them  to  come  here  to  fight  on  this  little 
checker-board  of  the  French  departments." 

"And  they  will  come,  they  all  will,"  said 


76  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

Daisy.  "A  sentiment  is  born  in  them  which 
owes  its  life,  as  you  say,  to  conscience,  and  it 
will  grow  and  become  as  powerful  a  motive  as 
the  indignation  felt  by  other  fighting  nations." 

"That  is  true,"  said  Harder.  *' Germany  has 
established  a  code  of  political  ethics  which  is 
revolting  to  conscience  as  well  as  reason. 
There  is  a  shade  of  madness  in  their  dream. 
You  have  lived  in  Germany,  Miss  Folk.  Do 
you  remember  the  saying  of  the  old  man  of 
Konigsberg:  'Political  morale  begins  where 
political  morality  stops'?  It  has  often  come 
into  my  mind  while  we  were  talking  with  the 
German  officers.  As  we  sat  quietly  drinking 
Moselle  wines  we  often  discussed  the  probabil- 
ity of  America's  going  into  the  war.  Well,  the 
young  men  of  my  country  mean  to  defend 
political  morality  against  political  morale  J' 

"There  is  only  one  morality,"  said  Daisy, 
"for  there  is  only  one  God." 

"That  is  what  every  one  of  our  men  will 
think  as  he  goes  into  the  fight.  At  first  they 
were  ignorant — ^then  they  hesitated,  doubted 
.  .  .  they  were  slow,  I  know,  but  the  long 
sleep  of  peace  makes  the  eyelids  of  a  prosper- 
ous nation  heavy.  However,  they  are  awake 
now,  and  coming." 


AN  EVENING  WITH  THE  C.  R.  B.       11 

"It  is  the  return  voyage  of  the  Mayflower ^^ 
said  Daisy. 

"Yes,"  said  Harder,  "and  it  is  in  the  coun- 
tries which  we  found  so  small  that  the  new 
passengers  will  find  the  New  World." 

He  stretched  out  his  hand,  saying  "Good- 
by,"  shook  our  hands  vigorously,  lighted  a 
cigarette,  and  in  a  moment  his  slender  outline 
was  hidden  by  the  night. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  AMERICANS   IN  THE  FIRST  DAYS  OF 
THE  WAR 

"And,  if  they  should  be  unwise  or  unjust,  a  flame  would  rise  from 
our  tombs,  and  the  blood  of  our  enemies  flow  in  unavailing  expia- 
tion."— Goethe,  Egmont,  Act  II. 


w 


E  were  a  party  of  five  one  evening  at 
the  house  of  Louis  Chevrillon. 

There  was  Morton,  a  delegate  of  the  C.  R.  B. 
for  the  north  of  France;  Hke  Harder,  he  had 
come  through  the  German  Hues  after  the 
United  States  declared  war,  and  to  get  from 
Lille  to  Paris  (a  journey  of  four  hours  ordi- 
narily) had  been  obliged,  like  his  compatriots, 
to  make  long  stages  through  Belgium,  Ger- 
many, and  Switzerland. 

(The  Germans  were  anxious  that  the  dele- 
gates should  drink  a  little  of  the  water  of 
Lethe;  they  had  seen  the  army  lines — and  had 
been  in  the  country  behind  them.) 

A  charming  American,  Mrs.  Vernon,  was 
also  newly  arrived  from  the  invaded  districts. 
She  had  lived  in  Belgium,  associated  with  all 
the  work  by  means  of  which  the  Commission 

78 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR         79 

had  managed  to  keep  order  and  sustain  life  in 
spite  of  the  dire  distress. 

I  met  her  then  for  the  first  time;  she 
spoke  of  some  of  our  fellow  countrymen,  ac- 
tually near  us  and  yet  far  removed,  because 
they  were  on  the  other  side  of  the  front.  She 
gave  us  the  names  of  some  of  the  stout-hearted 
Frenchmen  who  had  remained  on  the  invaded 
soil,  and  had  been  able,  with  the  help  of  the 
C.  R.  B.,  to  become  organizers  and  providers 
in  the  haphazard  life,  made  up  of  a  little  good 
and  much  ill  fortune,  which  all  led  while  under 
the  German  yoke. 

Our  hearts  warmed  to  her  as  she  spoke  of 
our  own  people  with  such  affection.  Her  ex- 
pression betrayed  strong  emotion,  although 
she  smiled  calmly;  she  was  evidently  a  woman 
of  energy,  made  up  also  of  sympathy,  zeal, 
and  goodness;  capable  of  taking  a  helpless 
multitude  into  her  heart  and  working  for 
them  as  a  mother  works  for  her  children,  put- 
ting intense  feeling  into  the  simple  tasks  of 
daily  life. 

When  Mrs.  Vernon  said  "I  had  the  privi- 
lege" ("privilege"  was  her  favorite  word)  "of 
helping  the  French  in  their  horrible  trial,"  she 
seemed  to  us  to  represent  a  Veronica  saying. 


80  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

with  the  accent  of  another  land:  "I  had  the 
privilege  of  wiping  the  bleeding  face  of  the 
Saviour." 

She  was  spending  her  last  evening  with  us, 
on  her  way  to  the  United  States  to  show  her 
countrywomen,  with  infinite  pity  and  respect, 
the  sacred  veil. 

It  does  not  hurt  to  be  pitied  in  such  a  man- 
ner! 

The  third  American  was  named  Rivards, 
and  impressed  me  as  being  much  like  Morton; 
one  is  apt  to  think  that  foreigners  are  more  or 
less  alike,  and  these  young  men  had  at  least 
one  trait  in  common — ^they  never  spoke 
of  themselves  individually.  They  said  "the 
C.  R.  B." — Commission  for  Relief  in  Belgium 
— as  the  members  of  a  secret  society  might 
speak  of  it,  and  seemed  to  have  lost  all  recol- 
lection of  any  life  led  before  they  joined  the 
C.  R.  B.  "Some  of  these  days  I  must  go  and 
see  if  the  United  States  is  still  there,"  said 
one  of  them.  Was  this  taste  for  almost  anony- 
mous privacy  a  matter  of  education .?  Did  it 
come  from  a  happy  gift  of  altruism .?  Or  was 
it  because  what  they  had  seen  during  the  war 
had  really  made  "  new  men "  of  them  ^  They 
never  said:  "Such  a  thing  happened  to  me.'' 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR         81 

They  were  imperturbably  cheerful,  willing  to 
help,  polite  without  being  too  effusive  or  too 
ceremonious.  It  was  really  hard  to  make  out 
whether  they  had  just  come  from  living  among 
the  most  tragic  scenes  of  the  war,  or  whether 
they  had  been  making  a  profound  study  of 
chess  or  bridge.  But  it  was  clear  that  they  had 
brought  to  the  work  which  they  had  accepted 
all  that  was  in  them  of  strength,  intelligence, 
exactness,  and  discipline. 

The  only  time  when  they  showed  no  trace 
of  this  slight  tinge  of  puritanism  (for  such  self- 
possession  verges  on  the  puritanical)  was 
when  they  spoke  of  their  chief,  Mr.  Hoover, 
the  chairman  of  the  C.  R.  B.,  and  then  they 
were  anything  but  Puritans;  they  laughed, 
and  let  themselves  go: 

"Hurrah  for  Hoover!" 

On  the  table  the  portrait  of  Hoover  re- 
mained unmoved  by  this  sudden  outbreak  of 
enthusiasm,  in  the  midst  of  formidable  piles 
of  reports  and  magazines  in  which  the  work 
of  the  C.  R.  B.  was  recorded.  It  was  the  like- 
ness of  a  man  of  few  words;  the  brow  low 
and  unwrinkled,  under  strongly  growing  hair; 
the  eyes  deep-set  in  their  sockets  and  very 
bright,  as  of  a  man  quick  to  observe;  the  lips 


82  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

thin  and  tightly  closed,  without  even  the 
shadow  of  a  smile;  the  head  slightly  bent,  as 
if,  even  while  in  the  hands  of  the  photographer. 
Hoover  was  thinking  of  some  obstacle  to  be 
quickly  and  silently  removed. 

That  was  the  impression  produced  on  us  by 
the  chief  of  this  new  little  neutral  power,  the 
C.  R.  B.,  as  he  looked  out  from  his  frame.  The 
name  of  Hoover  was  continually  on  the  lips  of 
Mrs.  Vernon  and  of  our  young  imperturbables. 
These  workers  of  the  first  hours  interested  us 
greatly,  for  their  quiet  exactness  was  a  prom- 
ise, as  surely  as  a  swallow  promises  spring, 
that  the  American  intervention  would  be 
prompt  and  well  thought  out. 

Hoover  in  his  frame  seemed  to  be  think- 
ing: "They  will  strike  hard." 

As  I  said  before,  there  were  five  of  us,  two 
women  and  three  men — ^three  Americans  and 
two  French.  We  had  just  had  a  little  war  din- 
ner in  a  dining-room  which  would  be  delightful 
on  a  yacht — ^very  small,  well  ventilated,  and 
with  two  windows  set  in  angles.  As  we  went 
up  the  stairs  to  the  apartment,  its  owner 
rushed  past  us,  fresh  from  the  offices  of  the 
C.  R.  B.  He  flew  up  the  five  stories  at  a  head- 
long rate,  for  he  bore,  swathed  in  the  august 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR         83 

pages  of  the  TempSy  the  chief  dish  for  our 
dinner — ^two  superb  soles,  which  he  had  bought 
at  the  great  Prunier's  on  his  way  home. 

We  had  eaten  the  soles,  preceded  and  fol- 
lowed by  a  lot  of  the  odd  little  things  which 
delight  the  mistresses  of  ordinary  common- 
place houses  when  they  dine  with  brothers, 
cousins,  or  friends  who  are  eccentric  and  im- 
penitent bachelors. 

Mrs.  Vernon  threw  a  slight  shadow  over 
our  innocent  mirth  at  this  modest  feast  by 
taking  in  her  hand  a  piece  of  bread.  Bread  was 
still  good  in  Paris,  and  the  crisp  crust  made  a 
sort  of  golden  case  for  the  soft  white  crumb 
inside  it;  she  turned  it  over  and  caressed  it 
tenderly  with  her  fingers,  as  if  it  had  been 
some  precious  thing,  saying: 

"Rivards,  what  would  we  have  given,  a 
month  ago,  to  have  been  able  to  take  a  piece 
of  bread  like  this  to  the  table  of  a  French 
family?'' 

"Don't  reproach  me  on  account  of  my 
bread,"  said  Chevrillon. 

"It  is  not  in  the  least  a  reproach,"  answered 
Mrs.  Vernon.  "I  was  only  thinking  that  this 
is  the  promised  land,  and  of  the  people  whom 
we  have  left  behind  in  the  desert;  the  very 


84  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

ordinary  and  every -day  words  for  food  have 
become  almost  sacred  to  me" — and  she  still 
held  the  bit  of  bread  in  her  dainty  fingers. 

"One  day  in  our  district  of  Peronne/'  said 
Rivards,  "I  saw  on  the  desk  of  one  of  our 
Americans  five  little  flasks  full  of  grains  and 
powders;  I  recognized  rice,  and  wondered  if 
our  friend  were  secretly  keeping  turtle-doves. 
He  saw  me  looking  at  the  bottles,  and  said: 
'In  each  one  of  those  I  have  put  the  daily 
allowance  of  wheat,  rice,  sugar,  and  coffee 
doled  out  to  a  Frenchman.  It  is  my  daily  les- 
son, and  when  I  find  myself  inclined  to  think 
that  our  diet  in  the  invaded  territory  is  some- 
what frugal,  the  sight  of  those  little  bottles 
ekes  out  my  meal.  No,'  he  said,  as  if  guessing 
my  guilty  thought,  *  that  is  not  food  for  birds, 
but  the  rations  of  French  men  and  women.'" 

"That  is  called  the  life-sustaining  allow- 
ance," said  Morton,  "and  millions  of  human 
beings  work  hard  for  it  and  thank  God  when 
it  is  given  them.  It  is  nine  o'clock,"  he  said, 
looking  at  his  watch;  "in  a  few  hours,  at  dawn, 
or  even  earlier,  the  lines  will  begin  to  be 
formed  and  to  grow  outside  our  canteens  in 
the  invaded  country." 

At  Chevrillon's  signal  we  left  the  table,  and 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR         85 

as  the  evening  was  mild  we  crowded  out  upon 
the  balcony.  From  our  fifth  story  we  were  on 
neighborly  terms  with  the  tops  of  the  plane- 
trees  as  they  swayed  rustling  in  the  light 
breeze,  and  we  could  watch  the  shining  course 
of  the  Seine  far  below,  for  just  here,  at  the 
Quai  Debilly,  the  river  makes  a  graceful  and 
indolent  curve  between  its  stone-lined  banks. 
The  plane-trees  and  poplars  planted  on  either 
side,  alike  in  height  and  growth,  leaned  for- 
ward a  little  to  follow  it  in  its  course,  like  a 
row  of  suitors  when  their  lady-love  passes  by. 

Seats  were  brought  out  for  the  ladies — two 
narrow  deck  chairs,  over  which  were  thrown 
roughly  woven  Mexican  blankets,  broadly 
striped  in  black  and  white. 

There  we  were  as  if  seated  on  primitive 
thrones.  The  night  landscape  was  full  of 
beauty.  The  quiet  river  shone  through  the 
trees,  and  as  far  as  we  could  see  towers  and  the 
spires  of  churches  lifted  themselves  into  the 
transparent  air.  In  front  of  us  the  Eiffel  Tower, 
a  filagree  of  light  and  dark,  was  a  fairy  ladder 
waiting  for  sprites  to  climb  moonward,  while 
from  its  lantern,  crowned  with  glowing  stars, 
search-lights  threw  their  rapid  and  furtive 
rays  into  space,  like  the  glances  of  anxious 


86  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

eyes.  To  the  right,  a  great  mass  of  undefined 
shadow,  lay  the  Bois  de  Boulogne. 

"Although  I  have  often  been  in  Paris,"  said 
Mrs.  Vernon,  "it  seems  different  now  in  war- 
time. I  have  never  seen  the  city  so  broadly 
mapped  out  under  the  stars;  it  looks  like  a 
very  dark  print." 

"I  am  very  fond  of  this  war  Paris,"  said 
Morton.  He  was  playing  with  a  little  cat 
which  he  had  snatched  up  on  his  knees;  it  was 
like  a  tiny  ghost  of  a  cat,  gray  as  a  shadow  or 
a  wreath  of  smoke.  In  winter,  when  it  was 
lazily  curled  round,  asleep  on  the  hearth,  close 
to  the  dying  embers,  it  looked  like  a  little 
heap  of  ashes.  We  called  it  Cendret. 

"I  am  very  fond  of  this  war  Paris,"  repeated 
Morton. 

"Paris  has  around  it  and  above  it  space 
and  sky,"  said  Mrs.  Vernon,  leaning  over  the 
balcony,  "and  it  has  also  silence.  One  hears 
the  water  sliding  past,  and  the  trees  breath- 
ing." And  she  stretched  out  her  hand  with  a 
prettily  earnest  gesture,  saying:  "May  war 
never  touch,  nor  even  menace  any  one  of  your 
beautiful  stones."  And  she  added:  "I  appre- 
ciate this  symmetry  all  the  more  because  I 
have  seen  so  many  lovely  and  venerable  things 
perish.  I  have  witnessed  frightful  and  wide- 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR         87 

spread  destruction,  but  I  have  never  seen  a 
stone  fall  from  a  cottage  in  your  ravaged  land 
without  being  conscious  of  the  feeling  of  order 
and  of  attachment  which  had  placed  and  kept 
it  there.  I  was  in  a  church  one  day,  at  Saint 
Omer.  Shells  had  pierced  it  through  and 
through;  bits  of  sky  showed  through  the  rents 
in  the  vaulted  roof;  crows  had  built  their  nests 
in  the  capitals  of  the  pillars,  and  flew  scream- 
ing and  cawing  in  the  place  which  formerly 
had  only  heard  the  murmur  of  prayers.  Grass 
grew  between  the  flagstones.  As  I  looked  a 
large  stone  became  detached  from  the  roof  and 
fell  into  the  choir  . . .  and  then  another  . . .  and 
yet  another.  They  fell,  one  by  one,  and  the 
sound  of  their  falling  was  repeated  sonorously 
from  the  arch  overhead.  How  I  thought  that 
day  of  the  hands  that  had  set  those  stones  in 
place !  I  love  France  so  dearly  that  I  even  love 
the  hard-working  hands  of  the  men  long  dead, 
who  mixed  the  mortar  and  held  the  trowel . . . 
and  to  come  where  all  this  beauty  is  intact 
makes  more  poignant  the  contrast  with  the 
desolation  we  have  left  behind." 

A  brisk  current  of  air  made  us  turn  our 
heads;  the  door  opened,  and  in  came  our 
friends  Daisy  and  Nettie  Bell. 

We  left  the  balcony,  as  it  would  not  have 


88  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

held  us  all,  and  as  Daisy  was  shaking  hands 
with  her  compatriots  she  said : 

"I  am  sure  you  must  have  been  speaking  of 
the  C.  R.  B." 

"Not  at  all/'  said  Morton.  "We  were  say- 
ing that  Paris  in  the  moonlight,  swathed  in 
her  dark  war-veils,  seems  to  us  a  new  city/* 

"Everything  is  new,"  said  Daisy.  "We  our- 
selves," and  she  looked  at  her  companion,  "we 
are  also  new." 

"As  for  me,"  said  Mrs.  Felder,  "I  feel  as  if 
I  had  only  really  been  born  on  the  day  when 
my  country  went  into  the  war.  I  am  youth 
itself!"  And  as  she  stood  smiling  before  the 
mirror  she  twisted  around  her  fingers  the  little 
curls,  shining  with  silver  threads,  which  had 
strayed  from  under  her  toque. 

"We  have  known  the  French,"  she  went  on, 
"as  people  do  who  have  often  met,  but  only 
at  masquerades,  with  masks  and  in  dominoes. 
And,  face  to  face,  we  have  gone  through  the 
complicated  steps  of  the  dance  which  calls 
itself  international  life." 

"That  is  precisely  the  reason,"  said  Daisy, 
"that  neither  of  us  has  been  able  to  see  the 
national  life  of  the  other.  We  demanded  of 
Paris  that  she  should  make  a  display  of  pre- 
tentious frivolities  for  us." 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR         89 

"'The  France  of  foreigners,"  said  Mrs. 
Felder,  "was  not  at  all  that  of  the  French." 

"In  fact,"  said  Daisy,  "we  have  often  been 
amused  by  the  ignorance  of  Parisians  about 
the  only  side  of  Paris  known  to  us.  We  liked 
to  see  a  light  which  was  only  phosphorescence. 
After  thousands  of  years,  we  are  still  interested 
in  the  phosphorescence  of  Athens  and  of 
Rome." 

"The  most  attractive  thing  in  a  really 
strong  being  is  his  weakness,"  said  Nettie  Bell. 

"We  did  not  see  the  fire,"  said  Daisy;  "we 
were  only  looking  at  its  reflection." 

"It  was  not  the  torrent,"  went  on  Nettie 
Bell  quickly;  "it  was  the  froth  on  the  stream, 
which  dissolved  between  our  fingers." 

"It  was  not  the  forest,"  Daisy  answered  at 
once  (they  were  both  evidently  amused  by  the 
duet),  "but  the  creepers  which  flowered  and 
nodded  around  the  old  trunks.  All  the  winds 
of  the  earth  seemed  to  come  together  here, 
sowing  good  and  bad  seed  broadcast.  Do  you 
remember,  Nettie  Bell,  the  big  orchids  in  our 
Southern  woods .?  They  swayed  to  and  fro, 
dazzlingly  beautiful,  under  the  branches  of 
our  oaks,  but  they  had  no  roots." 

"Yes,"  said  Nettie  Bell,  "I  remember  them; 
I  have  often  gathered  them  in  a  wood  which  I 


90  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

knew  well.  I  loved  the  long  evenings  when  we 
used  to  cut  their  greedy  clusters." 

"They  perished  when  the  cold  winds  blew/' 
said  Daisy,  "and  were  strewn  on  the  ground, 
exquisite  in  death." 

"And  then/'  said  Nettie  Bell,  "the  great 
trees,  stripped  of  their  smothering  ornaments, 
showed  their  strength  as  they  held  their  own 
against  the  blast  which  had  raised  the  long 
waves  of  the  ocean." 

"Is  this  an  apologue.?"  asked  Morton 
gravely. 

"Of  course  it  is,"  said  the  pair,  glancing 
meaningly  at  each  other. 

"Our  friends  are  very  poetical  this  eve- 
ning," said  Mrs.  Vernon. 

"It  is  not  we  who  are  poetical,"  said  Daisy, 
"all  France  is  a  great  tragic  poem.  Have  you 
noticed  that  every  one  says:  'It  is  impossible 
for  me  to  do  any  reading'  ?  Imagination  has 
never  conceived  anything  so  portentous  as 
what  we  are  living  through." 

"I  have  not  been  in  Paris  since  1914/'  said 
Mrs.  Vernon,  "and  then  only  for  a  day.  It  was 
in  September.  I  had  come  from  Brittany,  and 
was  trying  to  get  to  London.  It  was  on  a  Sun- 
day, and  the  German  menace  hung  over  Paris 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR         91 

like  a  malevolent  cloud.  The  government  and 
the  administration  had  moved  to  Bordeaux.  I 
looked  with  anxious  curiosity  at  the  Parisians, 
as  one  looks  at  children  who  have  been  left 
alone.  They  were  all  evidently  under  a  great 
strain.  I  remember  one  woman's  saying  to  me 
that  afternoon:  'I  don't  know  whether  I  can 
hear  cannon  very  far  away,  or  whether  it  is 
only  my  heart  beating.'  I  was  all  alone,  trying 
to  get  through  a  long  Sunday  of  waiting.  I 
took  a  cab,  and  wandered  rather  aimlessly 
along  the  quays;  I  wanted  to  see  Paris  with 
her  beauty  still  unharmed;  it  seemed  an  un- 
imaginable calamity  that  within  twenty-four 
hours  it  might  be  destroyed.  Almost  without 
knowing  it  I  found  myself  at  the  He  de  la 
Cite,  and  there  I  heard  what  sounded  like  a 
powerful  yet  calm  and  rhythmical  murmur.  I 
left  the  cab,  and  went  as  far  as  Notre  Dame. 
An  immense  crowd  was  gathered  in  the  great 
square  before  the  cathedral.  The  three  deeply 
recessed  doors  of  the  church  were  wide  open, 
and  at  the  end  of  these  long  avenues  of  shadow 
I  could  see  the  interior,  all  aflame  with  can- 
dles. The  worshippers  who  thronged  the  nave 
and  aisles  were  singing;  their  voices  came  out 
to  us  deadened  and  distant,  as  if  from  another 


92  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

world,  almost  drowned  by  the  rolling  of  the 
mighty  organ.  In  the  great  square  the  immense 
crowd,  with  one  voice,  chanted  the  responses. 
The  children  who  had  been  left  alone  sang — 
and  prayed. 

"It  was  a  peculiar  experience  for  a  stranger 
to  be  thus  thrown,  almost  by  accident,  into 
the  intimate  life  of  a  whole  city  on  a  day  of 
sore  distress.  I  had  never  t  sen  the  cathedral 
church  of  Paris  literally  overflowing  with  life 
and  echoing  to  prayers.  It  was  for  that,  and 
not  to  be  a  precious  and  half-deserted  monu- 
ment, that  the  mighty  church  had  been  reared. 
On  her  island,  with  the  river  flowing  around 
her,  she  was  like  a  great  mystical  vessel  laden 
with  pilgrims,  coming  down  with  the  current 
toward  the  plain.  It  seemed  as  if  the  great 
metal  statues  on  the  roof  were  for  the  first 
time  set  free  from  their  hierarchical  align- 
ment; as  if  the  saints  were  going  freely  to  and 
fro,  like  anxious  mariners  watching  the  heav- 
ens and  the  sea.  Some  of  them  seemed  to  go 
down  narrow  stairs,  almost  like  rope  ladders, 
outside  the  turrets,  swiftly  and  calmly,  speak- 
ing one  to  the  other.  As  I  was  looking  at  them 
with  amazement  I  saw  another  strange  sight 
in  the  open  space  around  the  old  vessel  girdled 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR         93 

with  the  waters;  more  statues  were  moving  in 
an  undulating  manner,  as  if  they  were  being 
borne  on  invisible  shoulders  above  the  crowd. 
They  were  the  patrons  and  saviors  of  France; 
I  heard  the  people  near  me  call  them  by  name 
— ^Saint  Denis;  Saint  Genevieve,  tali  and  erect 
in  her  silver  robes;  Saint  Louis;  Jeanne  d'Arc, 
carrying  her  banner.  They  had  been  brought 
out  of  old  reliquaries;  they  prayed  with  the 
people  and  the  people  prayed  with  them." 

"Our  friend  is  even  more  poetical  than  we 
were,"  said  Daisy. 

"It  is  only  that  I  have  never  forgotten  that 
vision,"  said  Mrs.  Vernon.  "Perhaps  the  love 
inspired  in  me  by  France  dates  from  that  day. 
Those  myriads  of  people,  pouring  from  every 
quarter,  were  communing  with  their  past; 
they  sought  a  means  of  escape  from  the 
dreaded  morrow  by  going  deep  down  in  their 
history,  back  toward  their  forefathers,  on 
the  same  little  island  where  Saint  Genevieve 
had  watched  over  the  ramparts  threatened  by 
the  same  foe;  it  was  a  vision  of  the  fifth  cen- 
tury. So  much  for  your  Babylonian  Paris!" 
And  she  added,  with  emotion:  "To  belong  to 
an  old  nation  is  a  noble  inheritance.  We  shall 
all  have,  like  young  crusaders,  the  recollection 


94  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

of  some  particular  date,  that  of  the  day  on 
which  we  first  understood  what  this  war  really 
meant.  Do  you  remember,  Daisy,  at  the  time 
of  the  presidential  election  in  the  United 
States,  six  months  ago,  the  big  posters  in 
every  street  of  every  town,  in  all  the  States  ? 
One  saw  the  thin,  cold  face  of  Mr.  Wilson, 
with  his  light,  observant  eyes  behind  their 
glasses,  and  underneath  were  the  words:  'He 
kept  us  out  of  war.'" 

"Yes,"  said  Daisy,  "I  remember  those 
posters;  they  corresponded  to  the  feeling  of 
that  day.  We  had  not  then  begun  to  under- 
stand the  inner  meaning  of  the  war.  Our  young 
and  sensible  country  was  perhaps  rational  in 
holding  back  from  the  convulsion  called  war; 
we  thought  ourselves  safe  from  the  periodic 
eruptions  of  the  old  European  volcano." 

"Besides,  war  was  not  a  volcanic  eruption 
for  the  United  States,"  observed  Morton. 
"We  came  into  it  without  a  shock,  with  no 
surprise,  through  internal  processes  due  to 
conscience  and  intelligence.  The  same  likeness 
of  the  same  President  Wilson  might  be  still 
shown  on  every  wall  of  every  city  in  all  the 
States,  with  the  same  eyes,  as  cool  and  observ- 
ant as  ever,  and  we  should  take  off  our  hats 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR         95 

while  we  wrote  under  the  portrait:  *He  de- 
clared war/  He  spared  us  a  period  of  opposi- 
tion, discussion,  and  disagreement,  and  the 
whole  nation,  turning  completely  round  from 
the  idea  of  peace  to  that  of  war,  went  forward 
at  the  pace  set  by  him.  After  such  lucid  and 
methodical  reasoning  the  necessity  for  war 
was  as  clear  as  the  demonstration  of  a  math- 
ematical problem/* 

"Yes,"  said  Daisy,  "and  the  rational  young 
continent  will  make  war  strongly  and  logi- 
cally; I  see  my  country,  her  decision  once 
made,  resolved  to  go  on  to  the  end,  and  put- 
ting forth  all  her  strength  to  back  her  will. 
We  seem  very  unlike,  springing  as  we  do  from 
such  different  stocks;  our  flowering  may  be 
widely  different,  but  all  our  roots  are  struck 
deep  in  American  soil;  we  all  stretch  upward 
toward  the  sun  with  the  same  energy — ^toward 
what  we  will  to  do.  We  shall  see  that  the  war 
will  be  a  sort  of  'fiat  lux'  for  the  nation.  We 
were  saying  the  other  day  that  we  had  not 
known  Germany,  nor  did  she  know  us.  We 
were  amazed  by  England,  and  we  may  con- 
fess now  that  we  did  not  really  know  how 
much  mysterious  and  magnetic  force  there 
was  in  France.  You  will  acknowledge  some 


96  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

day  that  you  had  only  crude  and  fragmentary 
ideas  about  us." 

"What  will  surprise  the  French  more  than 
anything  else,"  said  Mrs.  Vernon,  "is  the  sim- 
plicity, amounting  almost  to  candor,  of  our 
men.  What  have  they  known  of  us,  for  the 
most  part  ?  The  so-called  American  women 
represented  in  their  novels  or  plays,  and  the 
little  gilded  crowd  that  was  to  be  found  in 
Paris  between  the  quarter  of  the  Etoile  and 
that  of  the  Opera,  or  in  the  various  'Palaces.' 
However"  (and  her  sensitive  face  showed  her 
relief),  "we  shall  now  see  each  other  as  we 
really  are — ^we  shall  know  what  your  religion 
so  rightly  calls  'the  inner  life.'  The  inner  life 
of  a  people  is  ordinarily  hidden,  and  only  re- 
veals itself  in  times  of  trial.  I  have  felt  it  so 
strongly  in  France !  We  at  home  are  still  mak- 
ing speeches,  taking  diplomatic  notes,  expand- 
ing in  the  verbal  enthusiasm  of  people  gener- 
ously stirred  by  a  great  cause.  It  will  be 
different  when  our  troops  get  here;  when  you 
know  what  my  contemporaries  have  never 
known;  when  American  blood  begins  to  be 
shed.  It  is  then  that  you  will  know  us  for 
what  we  really  are,  and  until  that  time  comes, 
do  not  speak  of  us  at  all.  I  thought  I  loved 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR         97 

France,"  she  went  on,  "but  I  did  not  know 
her  until  I  saw  her  suffer  and  bleed  during 
my  long  stay  in  the  invaded  country.  I  had 
the  happiness — ^yes,  the  happiness — of  passing 
many  months  shut  up  with  the  French,  and 
facing  the  Germans.  All  that  I  had  read  about 
France  previously,  and  all  that  I  had  myself 
seen,  counted  for  nothing.  We  shall  always 
consider  that  it  was  our  privilege — ^I  hold  to 
that  word  *  privilege' — to  enter  thus  into  the 
life  of  a  people  during  their  trial,  to  be  in  in- 
timate relations  with  them,  and  to  see  their 
wound. 

"That  wound  was  the  scarcity  of  food — ^hun- 
ger. One  may  manage  to  accept  the  usual  idea 
of  war,  that  of  men  fighting  among  themselves, 
but  when  we  knew,  while  I  was  still  in  Amer- 
ica, that  the  Belgian  and  French  population  in 
the  invaded  districts  was  threatened  with 
famine,  we  were  all  shaken  by  emotion.  Mor- 
ton, you  were  in  London — ^you  heard  the  first 
cry  for  help." 

"Yes,"  said  Morton,  "it  came  from  Brus- 
sels. My  compatriot,  Millard  Shaler,  who  was 
sent  by  Belgian  committees,  brought  the  first 
message,  and  our  ambassador  in  London,  Mr. 
Page,  received  it.  It  was  an  historic  moment 


98  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

for  us/'  he  said,  looking  at  his  companions, 
**for  it  was  then  that  the  C.  R.  B.  was  organ- 
ized— on  the  2Sth  of  September,  1914.  The 
invasion  of  Belgium  had  somewhat  slackened 
— the  breach  had  been  made,  and  the  German 
armies  were  pouring  into  France.  In  Belgium 
the  Germans  were  beginning  to  install  them- 
selves— ^you  know  how !  They  were  forming  an 
administration,  appointing  a  governor-general 
and  governors  of  the  different  provinces.  But 
this  administration  chiefly  concerned  itself 
with  feeding  the  German  armies,  that  is  to 
say,  with  gathering  in  the  foodstuffs  and 
requisitioning  the  cattle.  As  well  as  we  could 
count,  215,000  Belgians  took  refuge  in  France 
during  August  and  September,  1914;  80,000 
went  into  Holland  after  the  capture  of  Ant- 
werp, and  there  were  about  100,000  in  Eng- 
land. If  you  saw  these  multitudes  leaving  or 
arriving,  you  felt  that  you  were  witnessing 
the  exodus  of  a  whole  nation.  Large  num- 
bers are  always  impressive.  But,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  the  reality  was  different.  Only 
a  minority  had  fled — ^they  who  had  happened 
to  be  in  the  blood-stained  path  of  the  armies. 
There  still  remained  seven  millions  of  souls 
rather  of  mouths — to  be  fed  in  a  country 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR         99 

whose  agricultural  and  industrial  riches  had 
been  destroyed  or  confiscated,  and  which  was 
constantly  overrun  by  German  armies  going 
or  coming,  by  the  German  wounded,  by  tired 
troops  who  were  resting  before  being  sent  to 
the  Russian  front.  And  all  of  them  ate  and  ate. 

"I  think  it  was  the  great  burgomaster  Max, 
now  revered  the  world  over,  who  was  au- 
thorized by  the  Central  Committee  to  enter 
into  negotiations  with  the  Germans  in  order 
that  some  thousands  of  tons  of  food  supplies 
might  be  admitted  into  Belgium. 

"This  Central  Committee  was  made  up  of 
rich  and  influential  men,  accustomed  to  han- 
dle large  business  transactions,  without  regard 
to  their  political  opinions.  They  were,  there- 
fore, not  'officials';  they  did  not  represent  the 
government  with  which  Germany  was  at  war; 
they  represented  only  the  hungry  millions,  and 
sought  to  feed  them. 

"M.  Solvay  gave  his  great  name  to  this 
national  committee;  M.  Janssen  also  joined  it, 
and  M.  Francqui  became  its  managing  di- 
rector. It  is  only  bare  justice  to  name  the  Bel- 
gians before  speaking  of  ourselves.  Their  coun- 
try had  no  more  money  and  no  more  wheat. 
Only  one  thing  was  left — its  men. 


100  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

"The  committee  addressed  itself  in  the  sec- 
ond instance  to  the  diplomatic  representa- 
tives of  the  neutral  powers  who  had  remained 
in  Brussels:  the  American  minister,  Brand 
Whitlock,  and  the  Marquis  of  Villalobar,  who 
represented  the  King  of  Spain. 

"It  was  thus  that  the  first  few  links  of  a 
double  chain  were  forged.  It  was  necessary,  on 
the  one  hand,  to  fill  the  empty  granaries  of 
Belgium  from  the  reserve  stocks  of  Europe 
and  America,  and,  on  the  other,  to  reach  the 
German  authorities,  such  as  the  governors  of 
provinces,  or  even  the  general  government,  as 
without  their  consent  the  vessels  loaded  with 
wheat  from  the  United  States  would  hasten  in 
vain  to  the  docks  of  Rotterdam.  The  manna 
would  not  fall  from  heaven  of  itself;  it  could 
only  come  through  a  door  in  the  wall  of  fire 
and  iron  enclosing  Belgium,  and  unless  that 
door  were  opened  by  German  hands,  famine 
would  take  possession  of  the  beleaguered 
land." 

" Villalobar,''  said  Daisy.  "Was  he  the  same 
who  had  been  Spanish  minister  at  Lisbon?'' 

"Why,  yes,''  answered  Mrs.  Vernon,  "and 
if  you  had  known  him  you  would  think  as  I 
do,  that  there  could  not  be  two  Villalobars." 


'1  'I 

THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       101 

"To  be  sure !''  said  Daisy.  "He  is  a  remark- 
able man.  And  when  one  has  met  him  it  is 
impossible  to  think  of  Spain  and  the  Span- 
iards without  calHng  to  memory  his  strikingly 
Spanish  face.  Love  of  old  Spain  was  deep- 
rooted  in  his  heart.  He  loved  her,  and  yet  he 
also  had  visions  of  a  new  young  Spain,  casting 
off  the  fetters  of  tradition  and  custom  to  move 
freely  in  the  modern  world.  If  I  were  to  see 
him  again,  how  I  should  like  to  remind  him  of 
the  days  which  we  spent  together  in  the  Por- 
tuguese back  country,  when  we  both  used  to 
dip  into  the  great  pots  in  which  the  foundation 
of  rice  was  mixed  with  a  varied  assortment  of 
Spanish  peppers,  crabs,  shell-fish,  and  skinny 
little  pullets.  It  was  then,  in  those  hostelries 
which  might  have  sheltered  Don  Quixote,  that 
Villalobar  used  to  speak  of  his  sovereign  and 
of  his  dreams  for  Spain,  until  his  every  's* 
seemed  full  of  energy." 

"That  is  indeed  he,"  said  Morton.  "He  has 
not  changed,  and  he  earnestly  and  nobly  in- 
sisted that  his  sovereign  should  play  a  great 
part  in  this  matter  of  feeding  a  whole  country. 
Do  you  follow  the  thread.?"  he  went  on. 
"First  came  the  appeal  from  the  famished 
people,  and  the  Belgian  Control  Committee 


102  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

was  formed.  Even  before  the  war  there  was 
a  well-organized  system  of  charitable  rehef 
throughout  Belgium.  In  a  small  country,  liv- 
ing and  thriving  by  its  industry,  the  classes  are 
not  widely  separated;  the  rich  man  is  nearer  to 
his  poor  neighbor,  the  employer  to  his  work- 
men, the  landowner  to  those  who  till  his  soil. 
Besides  that,  the  two  great  political  parties. 
Catholic  and  Liberal,  were  equally  concerned 
with  the  problems  of  relief.  It  must  also  be 
remembered  that  the  country  was  not  central- 
ized in  its  capital.  We  found,  as  Harder  was 
saying  the  other  day,  that  the  Belgian  people 
are  full  of  civic  as  well  as  of  national  love  and 
pride.  That  is  a  natural  result  of  their  past 
history;  each  city — Liege,  Antwerp,  Malines, 
Ghent — ^had  already  its  own  charities,  worked 
for  and  helped  by  its  citizens.  It  was  as  though 
the  working  drawings  had  been  made  for  a 
great  building  which  should  shelter  the  refu- 
gees from  the  country,  and  the  indigent  and 
unemployed  in  the  towns.  The  old  spirit  of 
local  pride,  whether  in  cities  or  in  villages, 
sprang  up  more  strongly  than  ever,  and  you 
must  bear  in  mind  that  each  town  was  iso- 
lated from  other  towns,  that  each  village  stood 
by  itself.  It  should  never  be  forgotten  that 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       103 

this  system  of  separate  cells  was  enforced 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  occupied  dis- 
tricts, and  the  suffering  which  it  entailed  will 
never  be  fully  known.  Nobody  had  heard  of  it 
when  Millard  Shaler  came  to  London  with 
his  German  safe-conduct,  to  hoist  there  his 
signal  of  distress.  Popular  feeling  was  deeply 
stirred.  Could  it  be  possible  that  a  whole  na- 
tion was  faced  with  famine !  You  know  that 
very  many  English  people  were  most  hospita- 
ble to  the  Belgian  refugees,  not  only  giv- 
ing them  food  and  shelter  in  various  buildings, 
but  also  inviting  them  to  private  houses;  I 
know  of  a  number  of  English  homes  in  which 
the  guest-chamber  was  occupied  by  a  Belgian 
couple  who  in  every  way  shared  the  life  of 
their  hosts.  Acquaintance  and  friendship  had 
already  sprung  up,  and  when  the  news  spread 
that  Belgium  was  suffering  from  hunger,  the 
English  were  still  more  drawn  toward  their 
refugees;  when  they  looked  at  the  little  foreign 
children  among  their  own  in  the  nursery  of 
an  evening  they  could'  well  imagine  the  suffer- 
ing which  was  hanging  over  Belgium.  But  the 
American  ambassador,  a  neutral,  was  the  only 
man  who  could  act  in  the  matter,  and  on  the 
1st  of  October  Mr.  Page  received  Mr.  Hugh 


104  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

Gibson,  secretary  of  our  legation  at  Brussels, 
who  had  come  in  order  to  confirm  Mr.  Shaler's 
message  officially.  Mr.  Page  at  once  set  to 
work  to  solve  the  difficult  problem  in  the  only 
sensible,  indeed  the  only  possible,  manner — ^by 
finding  a  man — ^not  a  potentate,  nor  a  philan- 
thropist, nor  a  sociologist,  nor  a  generous  mil- 
lionaire— ^but  just  a  man." 

"A  man  capable  of  inspiring  enthusiasm," 
I  said. 

"Not  altogether  enthusiasm,"  said  Mrs. 
Vernon,  "or  at  least  not  enthusiasm  only;  a 
man  who  should  be  able  to  make  other  men 
respond  to  his  energy  and  to  his  devotion  to 
duty." 

.  "That  man,"  continued  Morton,  "was 
Hoover.  The  Hoover  of  to-day  you  all  know, 
but  at  that  time  he  had  scarcely  been  heard 
of,  except  in  the  business  world.  All  of  us  in 
the  United  States  have  to  look  for  our  ances- 
tors somewhere  in  Europe.  Hoover  is  a  name 
of  Flemish  origin,  and  the  man  himself  was 
well  known  in  London  as  a  mining  engineer. 
His  family  had  at  one  time  been  Quakers,  and 
from  them  he  derives  his  look  of  reserve,  his 
tightly  closed  lips,  and  his  taciturnity.  His 
work  as  an  engineer  had  led  him  to  Australia 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       105 

and  China,  as  well  as  all  over  America;  half 
of  his  life  had  been  spent  in  rapid  travel;  he 
went  from  London  to  Hanoi  as  a  business 
man  in  London  goes  from  his  house  to  his 
office  in  the  city,  and  he  had  looked  at  the 
world  wherever  he  went  with  his  gray,  sa- 
gacious eyes — ^the  observant  eyes  of  an  engi- 
neer. He  was  a  man  who  saw  and  was  not 
afraid  to  act. 

"He  had  very  vivid  recollections  of  the  Ger- 
mans, whom  he  had  seen  in  China  at  the  time 
of  the  Boxer  troubles.  Some  German  troops 
were  quartered  in  a  Chinese  village,  and  one 
evening  the  men  became,  as  the  report  put 
it  afterward,  *  slightly  drunk,'  broke  into  the 
little  native  houses,  and  violated  the  women 
whom  they  found.  Now  you  know  that  when 
a  Chinese  woman  loses  her  honor  it  is  her  duty 
to  die,  and  the  morning  after  the  German 
soldiers  had  amused  themselves  in  their  fash- 
ion. Hoover  saw  the  bodies  of  hundreds  of 
Chinese  women  drifting  down  a  narrow 
stream;  they  had  all  thrown  themselves  into 
it  together. 

"Hoover  told  us  how  the  gayly  colored 
gowns  and  the  black  sashes  with  their  big 
bows  full  of  water  came  slowly  floating  be- 


106  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

tween  the  reeds;  a  close  procession  of  drowned 
women,  looking  as  if  a  flock  of  bright-hued 
birds  had  alighted  and  were  being  borne  along 
by  the  current. 

"He  said  sometimes  that  when  he  remem- 
bered that  sight  it  was  easy  for  him  to  imagine 
what  the  German  occupation,  even  of  a  civi- 
lized country,  would  mean;  the  words  German 
forces,  requisitions,  scarcity,  famine,  had  ter- 
rible significance  for  him. 

"Page  sent  for  Hoover  and  told  him  that 
the  Belgian  committees  (and  six  months  later 
it  was  the  same  story  from  the  French  com- 
mittees in  the  invaded  districts)  were  in  great 
distress,  having  neither  supplies  nor  money. 
If  a  neutral  committee  could  be  formed  to 
import  and  control  food,  the  Belgian  and 
French  organizations  would  see  that  it  was 
properly  distributed. 

"Hoover  knew  our  planet.  He  knew  where- 
abouts on  the  earth  gold,  copper,  tin,  or  dia- 
monds might  be  found;  he  had  even  rediscov- 
ered, in  a  crevice  of  Mount  Sinai,  the  old  mine 
from  which  the  Egyptians  took  the  greenish 
turquoises  that  we  believed  to  have  been  dis- 
colored by  time  in  the  tombs.  He  would  be 
able  to  find   in  other  mines  wheat,  bacon, 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       107 

beans,  shoes,  woollens,  and  cottons,  as  well  as 
the  ships  to  carry  these  stores  to  Holland, 
and,  above  all,  money  to  start  the  work.  He 
could  be  at  the  same  time  in  London,  New 
York,  San  Francisco,  Brussels,  and  Berlin; 
his  genius  for  ubiquity  was  unrivalled. 

"Hoover  listened  to  his  ambassador  silently; 
then  he  went  to  his  engineering  office,  shut  up 
shop,  and  I  don't  know  whether  he  has  ever 
been  back  at  his  office.  The  different  mining 
companies  saw  no  more  of  their  consulting 
engineer. 

"Hoover's  first  committee  was  made  up  of 
men  of  his  own  profession.  He  had  confidence 
in  them  as  a  body;  they  had  been  all  over  the 
world,  and  knew  it  well;  they  also  knew  the 
reverse  of  the  medal  as  well  as  its  face;  they 
were  familiar  with  material  difficulties  verging- 
on  the  impossible;  they  had  often  foreseen 
and  witnessed  accidents  and  catastrophes — 
they  had  also  often  averted  them. 

"The  Belgians  and  French  were  in  the  posi- 
tion of  a  large  gang  of  miners  overwhelmed 
by  a  landslide.  It  had  happened,  on  a  smaller 
scale,  to  men  before.  Their  calls  for  help  could 
be  heard;  the  would-be  helpers  knew  that  the 
prisoners  were  still  alive,  that  they  were  calm 


108  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

and  strong  in  their  patient  waiting.  It  was  a 
question  of  getting  them  out  without  making 
a  false  move  which  would  bury  them  more 
deeply,  and  of  managing  to  feed  them  until 
they  could  again  see  the  light  of  day.  A  prob- 
lem of  this  sort  naturally  interested  the  engi- 
neers. 

"The  committee  met  in  London  on  October 
22,  1914,  and  the  most  pressing  questions  with 
which  it  had  to  deal  were  set  forth  in  the  fol- 
lowing order: 

"To  find  money  for  the  purchase  of  food 
supplies. 

"To  come  to  an  agreement  first  with  the 
British  Government,  in  order  that  the  block- 
ade of  the  German  ports  and  of  the  invaded 
territory  should  be  suspended  at  a  place  to  be 
determined  upon. 

"To  obtain  from  the  German  Govern- 
ment subsequently  a  guarantee  that  the  food 
brought  into  Belgium  should  be  used  for  the 
benefit  of  the  civilian  population  only,  the 
same  guarantee  to  apply  later  to  France. 

"Finally,  to  make  distribution  certain  and 
effective,  an  agreement  to  be  reached  allowing 
the  American  delegates  to  live  behind  the 
German  lines  in  Belgium  and  northern  France, 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       109 

and  to  have  sole  and  entire  control  of  all  sup- 
plies imported.  The  foodstufifs  were  to  be  re- 
ceived by  the  delegates  at  Rotterdam  (for  all 
this  class  of  freight  came,  and  still  comes,  to 
that  port),  allotted  by  them  to  their  agents 
in  different  regions,  and  sent  off  under  seal, 
to  the  various  centres  of  distribution.  There 
they  were  to  be  counted,  reallotted,  and  fol- 
lowed step  by  step  in  their  dispersal  until  at 
last  they  should  reach  the  village  depots 
where  they  were  to  be  sold  or  given  away; 
the  Belgian  or  French  women  would  dole 
them  out  to  the  very  poor,  to  hospitals,  to 
schools,  and  even  to  the  houses  of  the  in- 
habitants, where  the  meagre  rations  would 
keep  famine  away  from  the  family  table. 

"This  comprehensive  plan  was  carried  out 
with  great  rapidity;  the  first  meeting  of  the 
committee  was  held,  as  I  have  said,  in  London 
on  the  22d  of  October.  Not  many  days  later 
an  old  deep-sea  captain  of  an  American 
steamer  bound  for  Liverpool  with  a  cargo  of 
wheat  was  quietly  smoking  his  pipe  on  her 
deck  when  he  received  a  message  by  wireless 
telegraphy:  'Take  your  cargo  to  Rotterdam.' 
His  astonishment  was  great,  but  the  message 
came  from  the  company  which  employed  him, 


no  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

so  he  changed  his  course  forthwith,  and  on 
the  5th  of  November  the  first  vessel  laden 
with  wheat  for  the  C.  R.  B.  came  into  the 
Dutch  port,  where  one  of  our  members.  Cap- 
tain Lucey,  was  impatiently  awaiting  it.  He 
took  over  the  cargo  at  once,  and  sent  it  on  to 
Brussels,  where  our  minister,  Mr.  Whitlock, 
and  our  delegates  began  its  distribution." 

"But  I  want  to  follow  the  plan  more 
closely,"  I  said.  "Where  did  the  money  come 
from  ?  Who  paid  for  the  wheat  ?" 

"The  money!"  said  Mrs.  Vernon.  "The 
money  came  from  everywhere;  after  the  first 
days  of  November  it  poured  into  the  coffers  of 
the  C.  R.  B.;  Hoover  and  his  Central  Commit- 
tee made  a  general  appeal  through  the  press, 
and  throughout  the  world  committees  and 
auxiliaries  were  formed  to  raise  the  funds 
needed.  These  committees  sprang  up  in  Eng- 
land, America,  Australia,  even  in  Japan  and 
China.  To  open  the  mail  of  the  C.  R.  B.  at  its 
offices  in  London,  which  I  have  done  many  a 
time,  was  to  witness  the  working  of  a  magic 
spell;  checks  from  all  the  quarters  of  the  globe 
were  piled  up  in  heaps.  Belgium  will  know 
some  day,  if  she  does  not  already,  what  burn- 
ing   sympathy    and    compassion    her    plight 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       111 

aroused  in  every  land.  We  Americans  espe- 
cially felt  that  it  was  an  immense  satisfaction 
to  our  consciences  to  be  able  to  give  at  least 
money  to  these  outraged  countries.  Each  fam- 
ily wished  to  be  something  more  than  inquisi- 
tive neutrals,  making  their  own  flesh  creep  by 
reading  horrible  stories  in  the  newspapers.  In 
London  one  daily  paper  pledged  itself  to  raise 
a  hundred  thousand  pounds  a  month  by  pop- 
ular subscription.  That  was  a  wonderful  time 
for  us  women  !  We  left  knotty  questions,  such 
as  the  British  blockade  and  the  German  guar- 
antees, to  be  settled  by  the  men;  our  business 
was  only  to  provide  money.  We  had  to  or- 
ganize committees  without  end:  large  com- 
mittees in  the  great  cities,  smaller  ones  in 
small  towns,  and  even  committees  in  the  agri- 
cultural districts,  to  reach  the  big  farms. 

"Daisy,  you  must  remember,  for  you  were 
there,  the  market  for  flowers  and  vegetables 
which  was  organized  by  our  San  Francisco 
committee.  We  set  up  our  booths  on  the  great 
square,  facing  the  bay;  and  those  of  us  who 
were  members  of  the  committee  wore  the  cos- 
tumes of  one  or  other  of  the  Belgian  or  French 
provinces.  We  all  had  tucked  away  in  our  port- 
folios pictures  of  your  old  national  costumes 


112  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

which  perhaps  had  been  brought  over  by  your 
emigrating  ancestors;  we  were  familiar  with 
the  head-dresses,  the  ribbons,  the  short,  full 
skirts;  to  us  they  were  full  of  charm,  perhaps 
because  we  have  no  such  thing  as  a  peasant 
among  us.  With  us  a  farmer  is  a  gentleman 
who  sells  wheat,  a  business  man  like  any  other, 
and  the  word  'peasant'  and  the  Old  World 
costumes  have  therefore  an  almost  poetic  at- 
traction which  would  be  hard  for  you  to 
understand. 

"We  sold  our  wares  all  day  in  the  big  square 
— our  California  guava,  our  muskmelons,  our 
cherries,  our  yellow  eschscholtzia — and  our 
roses.  All  our  bankers  and  merchants,  our 
millionaires  and  billionaires,  came  themselves 
as  early  as  seven  o'clock  in  the  morning  to 
make  their  purchases  at  our  booths,  and  we 
had  to  laugh  as  they  went  back  to  their 
motor-cars,  carrying  huge  cauliflowers,  great 
baskets  of  pears  or  apples,  or  armfuls  of 
chrysanthemums  and  roses.  As  for  me,  I  sold 
for  a  big  price — oh,  a  tremendous  price,  to  a 
banker  who  was  not  supposed  to  be  in  the 
least  sentimental — a  little  linen  bag  embroi- 
dered with  a  lily-of-the-valley;  in  the  bag  was 
a  handful  of  earth  which  a  refugee  woman 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       113 

from  the  north  of  France  had  brought  with 
her  as  Orientals  carry  tahsmans. 

"All  day  long  we  sold  to  men  who  were  sup- 
posed to  be  hard  and  practical  all  sorts  of  im- 
possibly foolish  little  trifles,  such  as  you  would 
sell  here  to  children.  A  button  from  a  French 
general's  uniform  made  a  great  hit.  Our  men 
out  there  are  at  the  same  time  realists  and 
sentimentalists.  They  will  not  take  time  to 
read  a  pathetic  story,  but  their  hearts  are 
moved  by  what  they  can  see  with  their  own 
eyes.  They  belong  to  the  family  of  Saint 
Thomas,  and  the  more  you  know  of  them  the 
more  you  will  be  conscious  of  this  quality;  you 
must  give  them  something  visible  and  tangi- 
ble. 

"I  have  told  you  about  San  Francisco,  but 
it  was  the  same  story  everywhere.  For  in- 
stance, at  Denver,  in  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
a  committee  had  been  formed  in  order  to  get 
up  a  club.  Hoover  was  then  making  a  cam- 
paign in  America;  he  stopped  at  Denver,  as- 
sembled the  committee,  spoke  to  them  of  Bel- 
gium for  a  quarter  of  an  hour — and  when  he 
left,  all  the  money  which  had  been  collected 
for  the  club  was  in  his  pocket.  It  was  a  matter 
of  a  change  of  heart,  of  a  couple  of  words  and 


114  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

a  couple  of  signatures,  and  that  Rocky  Moun- 
tain city  had  to  do  without  its  club.  I  don't 
want  to  seem  to  boast  of  our  having  given 
money — I  didn't  mean  that — ^I  only  meant  to 
show  Hoover's  quick  and  compelling  magnet- 
ism. It  was  not  the  mere  money — ^that  would 
not  have  been  worth  mentioning — but  the  giv- 
ing of  it,  so  instantly,  so  spontaneously,  meant 
that  the  picture  of  Belgian  distress  had  aroused 
pity  and  wonder  in  every  heart.  In  the  most 
remote  little  towns  of  the  United  States,  where 
the  war  seemed  infinitely  far  away,  there  was 
the  same  thrill  of  wonder  and  compassion  for 
Belgium  and  France — and  people  gave  and 
gave.  That  encouraged  us,  for  we  also,  as 
Daisy  can  tell  you,  made  a  campaign  of  our 
own.  In  French  we  should  be  obliged  to  say 
that  we  made  addresses  or  gave  lectures — ^but 
in  English,  luckily,  we  can  say  more  simply 
that  we  spoke.  We  went  about  from  town  to 
town  in  our  own  California;  sometimes  the 
meeting  was  held  in  a  theatre,  but  often  out- 
of-doors,  if  the  weather  was  fine.  We  simply 
said,  'This  is  what  we  have  seen,'  and  a  few 
weeks  later  the  checks  came  pouring  into 
London.  When  we  first  began  we  were  some- 
what doubtful  as  to  the  result.  The  war  was 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       115 

so  far  off — and  then  it  seemed  as  if  an  atmos- 
phere of  inviolable  peace  surrounded  our  Cali- 
fornian  country,  our  splendid  gardens,  our 
parks,  our  orchards  covered  with  domes  of 
blossoms  under  which  one  may  drive  in  spring. 
When  their  working  day  is  over  our  men  seem 
to  absorb  peace  as  they  sit  in  the  large,  fine 
houses  which  they  love  to  build,  and  look  out 
over  lawns  where  the  great  cedars  stand  up 
like  temples  of  silence.  Some  among  us  have 
pride  of  peace,  as  in  Germany  there  is  pride 
of  war;  peace  means  freedom  won  by  moral 
striving  toward  justice  and  mutual  tolerance. 
We  had  among  us  many  who  called  them- 
selves 'haters  of  war.*  Some  went  so  far  as  to 
refuse  to  hear  anything  about  'the  raving 
madness  of  Europe.'" 

"Yes,"  said  Daisy,  "but  they  listened  to  us, 
and  when  we  told  them  of  the  suffering  in 
Belgium  and  invaded  France  they  loosened 
their  purse-strings.  They  asked  nothing  better 
than  to  give  money,  and  by  so  doing  they 
drew  nearer  to  the  great  questions  of  the  war. 
Moved  by  pity,  they  asked  themselves  the 
reason  of  this  frightful  injustice,  and  already 
their  hearts  had  begun  to  take  sides. 

"You  are  such  a  logical  and  reasonable  race 


116  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

that  you  have  no  idea  of  the  strength  of  sen- 
timent in  our  country.  Our  men  are  pecuHar; 
they  are  sharp  at  a  bargain,  and  sometimes 
hard  to  get  on  with;  business  with  them  is  a 
game  in  which  their  energy  is  strained  to  the 
utmost.  The  more  money  they  make  the  more 
enjoyment  they  have,  the  more  they  feel  their 
power  and  their  superiority  over  their  rivals. 
But  once  away  from  their  offices  they  are 
extraordinarily  human,  almost  sensitive — ^I 
should  like  to  say  tender,  but  in  your  over- 
sensible  and  somewhat  mocking  country  that 
would  sound  ridiculous. 

"It  cost  them  nothing,  absolutely  nothing, 
to  give;  if  they  were  cautious  as  to  anything 
more  it  was  because  they  did  not  want  to 
take  part  in  the  European  dance  of  death. 
The  ocean  which  washes  their  shores  is  well 
named  the  Pacific,  and  they  were  pacific  as 
well." 

"That  is  not  the  same  thing  as  being  paci- 
fists," said  Daisy. 

"Not  at  all,"  said  Mrs.  Vernon,  "and  the 
pacific  'haters  of  war'  will  very  likely  send 
you  some  day  troops  who  will  fight  obstinately 
until  they  conquer.  Their  conversion  is  being 
prepared  by  stories  of  the  nameless  sufferings 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       117 

inflicted  on  a  people  who  were  only  defend- 
ing the  soil  of  their  country. 

"Sometimes  money  was  given  us  and  at 
other  times  wheat  or  flour. 

"Once  at  Philadelphia  we  saw  a  steamer 
sail  with  an  entire  cargo  of  flour,  the  gift  of 
the  flour-dealers  of  Minneapolis.  A  crowd  had 
gathered  on  the  dock.  The  steamer  looked  as 
if  it  had  been  powdered  all  over;  flour  was 
dusting  about  everywhere;  the  captain,  white 
as  a  miller,  was  laughing,  and  the  sailors 
laughed  too;  every  one  was  in  high  spirits, 
and  when  the  anchor  was  weighed  and  the 
flag  hoisted  there  was  great  cheering.  Nova 
Scotia  also  sent  cargoes  of  provisions,  at  her 
own  expense.  Such  vessels  were  called  'gift 
ships,'  and  on  their  subscription  lists  were 
names  of  many  people  who  had  but  little  to 
give,  and  also  of  many  children.  And  then 
later  I  saw  another  steamer  go  off;  it  was 
about  Christmas  time,  1915,  and  it  was  called 
*the  Christmas  ship' — ^I  told  you  we  were 
very  sentimental !  Her  cargo  was  made  up  of 
toys  and  playthings  for  the  Belgian  children, 
little  clothes  for  them,  and  ornaments  of  tin- 
sel, glass,  and  gilt  or  silver  paper  for  their 
Christmas-trees.  We  actually  had  a  president 


118  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

of  a  maritime  company,  its  stockholders,  the 
captain  of  a  ship  and  its  crew,  who  were  willing 
to  risk  their  boat  and  the  lives  of  all  on  board 
in  order  that  the  little  Belgians  might  be  able 
to  keep  their  traditional  holiday. 

"Notwithstanding  all  stipulations,  the  Min- 
neapolis gift  ship  was  sunk  by  a  submarine 
on  her  return  voyage.  But  that  was  only  one 
out  of  many;  the  other  ships  went  their  way, 
and  arrived  at  Rotterdam.  They  were  rather 
like  the  rich  man  in  the  gospel  who  had  to 
pass  through  the  eye  of  a  needle;  they  did  not 
exactly  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  but 
they  did  enter  by  the  narrow  way  of  Rotter- 
dam into  the  kingdom  of  the  poor.  Hoover  was 
pleased.  To  be  sure,  America  was  not  alone  in 
generosity,  and  he  has  often  told  us  that  the 
American  contribution  was  even  small  com- 
pared to  that  of  Australia.  It  seemed  as  if  the 
farther  countries  were  removed  from  the  war, 
and  the  more  they  felt,  or  fancied  themselves, 
secure,  the  more  they  were  moved  to  pity. 

"We  had  to  travel  a  great  deal  in  the  course 
of  our  work,'*  said  Mrs.  Vernon,  looking  at 
her  friend  Daisy.  "How  often  we  saw,  far  off, 
the  smoke  from  the  vessels  of  the  commission, 
and  watched  them  come  into  the  harbor  at 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       119 

Rotterdam.  The  C.  R.  B.  had  its  offices  on  the 
docks;  its  little  steam-launches  went  to  and 
fro  in  the  estuary  of  the  Meuse;  they  had 
the  commission's  own  particular  flag — ^indeed, 
they  have  it  still,  but  one  is  always  tempted 
to  speak  in  the  past  tense  of  something  in 
which  one  no  longer  has  a  part. 

'*Yes,  how  many  times  we  have  watched 
with  the  director,  Captain  Lucey,  the  mooring 
of  one  of  these  ships.  While  he  gave  his  orders 
I  looked  at  the  Meuse;  its  gray,  fast-flowing 
stream  had  passed  by  Verdun,  Dinant,  Namur, 
and  Liege;  and  as  I  thought  of  the  peaceful 
harbors  of  the  Pacific  Ocean  from  which  the 
ship  had  come,  I  remembered  words  I  had 
heard  in  a  hospital  from  a  little  French  sol- 
dier: 'The  evening  that  we  passed  through 
Dinant  the  Meuse  was  red  because  so  many 
bodies  stabbed  with  bayonets  were  bleeding 
in  it.'  The  Meuse  was  red  no  longer;  it  was 
a  dull  gray,  under  a  low-hanging  sky.  Weeks 
had  passed  since  the  bleeding  corpses  had 
rolled  and  drifted  out  to  the  eternal  oblivion 
of  the  ocean;  the  river  had  forgotten  them. 

"While  the  unloading  was  going  on  the 
masters  of  the  Dutch  lighters  sat  waiting  on 
benches  smoking  their  long  pipes,  their  feet  in 


120  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

white  wooden  shoes.  Captain  Lucey  had  to 
come  to  terms  with  them,  for  it  was  on  their 
great  flat  boats  that  supphes  could  get  into 
Belgium  and  France,  by  way  of  the  canals. 
Little  by  Httle  the  C.  R.  B.  had  to  lease  three 
hundred  of  these  barges,  as  it  had  been 
obHged,  after  the  first  gift  ships,  to  form  its 
own  fleet.  It  thus  became  a  little  neutral 
power  whose  merchant  marine  was  protected 
by.  international  agreements.  In  the  harbor  of 
Rotterdam  there  was  always  a  crowd  to  see 
the  boats  of  the  commission  come  in,  largely 
made  up  of  boys  and  girls  full  of  curiosity 
about  the  war,  for  whom  these  supplies  which 
were  to  go  into  the  forbidden  country  be- 
hind the  barbed-wire  barriers  had  a  some- 
what fearful  attraction.  The  Dutch  fisher- 
men, also  curious,  stood  silently  on  their 
fishing-smacks,  stopping  their  work  and  look- 
ing gravely  on,  as  if  the  big  vessel,  bedecked 
with  streamers,  was  part  of  a  funeral.  In- 
vaded Belgium  and  France  were  so  near 
that  it  was  as  though  a  dead  body  lay  in  an 
adjoining  room. 

"On  the  day  of  our  arrival  at  Rotterdam  a 
ship  had  just  been  unloaded  in  two  days  and 
a  half,  and  we  saw  the  lighters  being  filled. 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       121 

The  Dutch  masters  and  our  delegates  counted 
and  verified  the  sacks  together,  then  the 
barges  were  covered  with  big  tarpauHns,  with 
the  well-known  initials  of  the  commission 
painted  on  them  in  huge  letters.  The  tarpau- 
lins were  then  sealed,  the  seals  to  remain  in- 
tact until  the  load  should  arrive  at  its  destina- 
tion, and  then  only  to  be  broken  in  the  pres- 
ence of  one  or  several  of  the  thirty  young 
Americans  who  were  divided  between  the  cen- 
tres of  distribution  in  Belgium  and  France. 

"And  so,  the  next  day,  we  saw  thirty  light- 
ers going  peacefully  up  the  Meuse,  one  after 
another.  The  Germans  allowed  food  to  enter, 
but  they  kept  the  railways  for  the  transfer  of 
troops  and  munitions;  they  were  the  arteries 
of  their  formidable  war  circulation.  They  al- 
lowed us,  however,  to  make  use  of  the  canals, 
and  we  liked  to  think  of  their  beneficent  net- 
work— Dutch,  Flemish,  and  French;  the  trac- 
ery of  tranquil  waterways,  bordered  by  elms, 
poplars,  and  aspens,  reflecting  from  one  gen- 
eration to  another  the  placid  life  of  ancient 
countries.  Later,  when  we  were  living  in  the 
dreary  invaded  districts,  it  gave  us  almost  an 
illusion  of  peace  to  see  the  barges  come  float- 
ing down.''  And  here  Mrs.  Vernon  stopped 


122  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

and  looked  half-timidly  at  Morton,  as  women 
sometimes  do  when  they  have  betrayed  emo- 
tion in  speaking  of  a  subject  which  men  are 
in  the  habit  of  treating  with  composure,  as  a 
matter  of  business. 

"You  don't  say  anything,  Morton,"  she 
went  on.  "Do  you  think  I  am  too  sentimental 
about  our  C.  R.  B.  ?'' 

"Not  in  the  least,"  said  Morton.  "Quite  the 
contrary.  After  all,  is  not  the  whole  of  this 
war  a  question  of  sentiment .?  And  is  it  possi- 
ble for  us,  who  know  what  we  are  talking 
about,  to  call  attention  too  often  to  the  dan- 
ger which  still  threatens  the  invaded  coun- 
tries .?  There  are  no  longer  any  Americans  to 
take  charge  of  and  distribute  supplies;  Dutch 
and  Spanish  delegates  have  taken  our  places 
since  America  went  into  the  war.  That  change 
in  itself  is  not  very  important;  but  a  change 
is  possible  which  would  make  an  incalculable 
difference.  If  there  were  any  lack  of  money  to 
buy  the  food,  if  the  vessels  of  the  C.  R.  B. 
could  no  longer  go  to  Rotterdam,  if  the  canals 
should  freeze  over  in  winter,  and  if  then,  for 
instance,  the  Germans  refused  to  allow  the 
railways  to  be  used,  the  immediate  result 
would  be  not  hunger  alone  but  famine.  Death 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       123 

would  hover  over  the  whole  of  Belgium,  and 
even  more  especially  over  the  invaded  parts  of 
France.  The  life  of  the  inhabitants  of  those 
regions  hangs  by  a  thread.  It  is  certainly 
allowable  to  speak  of  sentiment,"  he  continued 
with  warmth,  ''when  one  has  seen  that  possi- 
bility as  we  have.  Those  who  have  to  live  in 
the  invaded  country  are  still  perforce  mute; 
you  will  only  know  later  all  that  they  have 
had  to  undergo.  In  order  to  help  them  to  keep 
the  little  spark  of  life  which  is  in  them  still,  we 
have  been  forced  to  be  very  calm  and  cold, 
forced  to  inject  clearness  and  method  into  our 
dealings  with  problems  which  called  primarily 
for  sentiment.  Hoover  said  to  us  over  and 
over  again:  'There  is  only  one  way  in  which 
you  American  delegates  can  do  your  duty, 
and  that  is  by  ignoring  the  war.  You  are  only 
stewards  of  grain,  of  bacon,  and  of  dried  peas. 
It  is  your  business  to  see  that  they  arrive 
safely,  to  count  and  weigh  them  accurately, 
and  to  make  sure  that  they  reach  the  mouths 
for  which  they  were  intended.'  And  what 
looked  so  big  when,  as  Mrs.  Vernon  says, 
fleets  of  ships  left  American  ports  and  strings 
of  barges  went  up  the  canals,  looked  very 
little  when  the  seals  were  taken  from  the  tar- 


124  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

paulins,  the  sacks  opened,  and  the  manna 
had  to  be  distributed  among  nine  millions  of 
hungry  mouths.  And  we  had  to  be  very  stingy 
stewards;  if  we  had  brought  into  the  invaded 
district  more  than  what  was  called  *the  ration 
necessary  to  sustain  life/  our  work  would 
have  been  looked  at  askance,  and  we  should 
have  given  offense." 

"But  to  whom  ?"  said  Daisy. 

"To  every  one.  It  happened  to  us  what  in- 
evitably  happens  to  those  who  are  called  upon 
to  play  a  part  in  a  great  conflict,  without  being 
on  one  side  or  the  other.  The  Germans,  with 
whom  we  had  necessarily  frequent  relations, 
reproached  us  bitterly  for  sending  munitions 
to  the  Allies;  when  they  saw  our  depots  full 
of  stores,  our  soup-kitchens  and  canteens,  our 
supplies  for  the  sick  poor  in  the  hospitals, 
they  spoke  of  the  hunger  in  Germany  because 
of  the  British  blockade.  They  said:  'You  are 
no  longer  neutrals;  you  are  keeping  alive  hos- 
tages whose  sufferings  might  otherwise  affect 
the  hearts  and  the  fighting  power  of  our  ene- 
mies; by  keeping  the  conquered  alive  you  are 
hindering  us  from  making  the  war  hard  and 
therefore  short.  It  is  you  who  are  prolonging 
it.' 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       125 

"And  when  we  went  to  England  or  France 
to  beg  for  money  and  for  vessels — ^for  after  a 
time  it  became  necessary  to  ask  the  govern- 
ments to  take  a  hand  in  the  vast  business — 
well,  we  found  that  the  Allies  also  looked  at  us 
coldly.  Here  in  France  they  said  to  us : '  By  all 
the  laws  of  war  it  is  the  Germans  who  should 
be  called  upon  to  feed  the  inhabitants  of  the 
districts  which  they  have  invaded.  The  enemy 
has  installed  himself  in  part  of  our  country, 
and  governs  it.  Everything  which  we  send  into 
those  districts  is  like  a  present  given  outright 
to  the  Germans,  for  if  we  feed  nine  millions 
of  Belgians  and  French,  there  is  just  so  much 
more  food  left  for  nine  millions  of  Germans. 
You  are  interfering  with  the  blockade,  and 
taking  ships  which  might  be  used  to  bring  us 
munitions — ^you  are  only  delightful  philan- 
thropists.' And  they  said  what  the  Germans 
had  done,  only  with  infinitely  more  grace  and 
polish,  holding  out  their  hands  in  sincere 
friendship:  'You  are  delightful  philanthro- 
pists, but  you  are  prolonging  the  war.' 

"  Prolonging  the  war !  The  same  bitter  and 
disturbing  criticism  came  from  both  sides; 
both  parties  had  come  to  the  same  conclusion. 
Doubt  sometimes  entered  our  own  minds — 


126  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

was  it  really  true  that  we  were  making  the 
war  last  longer  ?  If  we  had  not  intervened, 
would  the  Germans  have  fed  the  people  under 
their  yoke  ?  Was  it  true  that  our  barges  on 
your  canals  were  bringing  relief  to  the  Ger- 
mans and  not  to  the  French  civilians  ?  We 
heard  many  heated  discussions  upon  the  sub- 
ject, many  theories  as  to  the  war  which 
seemed  almost  convincing.  ...  But  when  we 
had  come  away,  and  were  facing  realities,  in- 
stead of  merely  talking  about  them,  our  own 
conclusion  was  always  the  same.  The  Ger- 
mans would  not  have  fed  either  the  Belgian 
or  the  French  population.  If  there  had  been 
no  blockade  they  might  perhaps  have  ob- 
served the  'laws  of  war,'  but  as  it  was,  they 
said :  'What !  we  ourselves  are  short  of  food  as 
we  have  never  been  before;  famine  is  one  of 
the  weapons  used  against  us,  and  our  enemies 
have  more  faith  in  it  than  in  the  strength  of 
their  arms — and  shall  we  deprive  ourselves  of 
what  was  grown  on  German  soil,  and  is  our 
own,  in  order  to  feed  our  enemies  ?  Is  that  the 
way  to  make  war — or,  at  any  rate,  this  war  of 
ours  ?  Are  civilians  not  to  be  allowed  to  die, 
although  German  soldiers  must  ?' 

"We  repeated  this  German  reasoning  in 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       127 

London,  and  sometimes  in  Paris;  in  the  offices 
of  cabinet  ministers  and  also  in  drawing- 
rooms.  You  have  many  very  charming  young 
women  here,  and  their  hearts  are  not  hard, 
but  their  love  of  country  made  them  feel  that 
we  were  in  the  wrong,  and  they  usually  said : 
'In  the  end  it  is  the  Germans  who  are  the 
gainers  by  your  work/ 

"Well!''  said  Morton  energetically,  "I 
know  it — ^we  all  know  it" — and  he  looked  at 
his  companions.  "The  Germans  would  not 
have  fed  the  civilians  of  France  and  Belgium 
from  their  slender  store — or,  rather,  to  be 
more  accurate,  I  will  agree  that  they  would 
have  fed  those  who  were  willing  to  work  for 
them,  for  their  war — they  would  have  been  put 
in  the  same  class  as  the  German  civilians;  but 
as  for  supporting  the  men  and  women  who 
resolutely  refused  to  work — never !  Here  you 
do  not  know  the  whole  situation;  there  are 
many  things  that  could  not  be  real  to  you  un- 
less you  had  actually  seen  them.  For  instance, 
you  cannot  picture  the  brutal  irritation  of  a 
German  officer  when  he  is  met  by  the  passive 
resistance  of  a  refusal  to  work.  We  have  seen 
— or,  rather,  we  have  heard  of  (for  we  were 
not  allowed  to  see  them) — men  who  had  so  re- 


128  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

fused  being  brought  to  the  Kommandatur,  and 
from  there  ordered  off  to  be  kept  in  ditches 
half  full  of  water  until  their  spirit  was  broken 
and  they  were  willing  to  go  to  work.  Ask  the 
men  and  women  who  have  been  repatriated ! 
You  will  hear  direct  testimony  then.  Women 
who  refused  to  do  manual  labor  for  the  Ger- 
man officials  were  obliged  to  stand  upright  in 
empty  and  unheated  rooms  until  they  also 
were  willing  to  give  in.  Through  uncurtained 
windows  they  could  look  into  an  adjoining 
room;  sewing-machines  stood  ready  there,  a 
chair  in  front  of  each.  It  is  needless  to  multi- 
ply instances.  Your  ears  will  be  filled  with 
them  as  soon  as  your  repatriated  people  come 
back,  and  you  will  believe  them  more  readily 
than  you  would  me,  for  you  will  see  in  their 
faces  how  much  they  have  suffered.  The  set- 
tled conviction  of  all  of  us  who  have  lived 
with  the  Germans,  and  who  do  not  look  upon 
them  as  altogether  the  Beast  of  the  Apoca- 
lypse, but  just  as  Germans  with  two  legs  like 
ourselves — our  conviction  is  that  the  daily 
bread  which  we  brought,  and  which  is  still 
being  given  every  day  in  Belgium  and  in 
France,  is  in  a  manner  the  last  bread  of  a 
final  last  freedom.  Can  you  believe  that  a 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR        129 

man  is  really  free  to  give  or  to  refuse  his  work 
to  his  masters  when  he  lacks  even  the  humble 
daily  loaf,  when  he  has  to  see  the  faces  of  his 
wife  and  children  pinched  with  hunger  ?  There 
is  one  sort  of  hunger  that  one  does  not  often 
see  because  it  is  soon  put  an  end  to  by  death. 
All  that  is  a  tragic  fact  which  crowds  out  of 
our  minds  the  various  theories  as  to  the  cus- 
toms and  even  the  Maws'  of  war.  The  Belgian 
and  Frenchman,  if  kept  alive  by  us,  was  free 
to  work  or  not  as  he  chose.  Even  if  he  had  to 
stand  in  the  ditch  half  full  of  water,  he  knew 
that  his  wife  and  the  children  would  have 
some  bread  and  rice,  and  a  little  bacon.  Here 
at  home  when  you  have  given  war  allowances, 
when  you  have  been  slow  in  enforcing  restric- 
tions (I  mean  no  reproach),  when  you  have 
not  wanted  to  disturb  but  keep  the  families 
of  soldiers  contented,  was  it  not  because  you 
wished  that  your  soldier  might  be  free  ?— free 
of  soul,  to  fight  without  a  backward  look. 
You  have  given  allowances  to  the  wives  and 
mothers  of  your  fighting  men;  why  is  that  i 
Because  the  man  under  arms  is  sacred  to  you, 
and  that  is  only  justice  to  him.  His  wife  and 
family  may  stay  in  lodgings  for  which  they  are 
not  forced  to  pay;  you  give  them  fuel  and  food." 


130  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

"Do  you  remember,"  said  Mrs.  Vernon, 
"that  in  the  gospel  Our  Lord  rebuked  the 
young  man  who  looked  behind  him  ?  When  I 
was  in  Belgium  and  France  I  often  thought  of 
how  Christ  had  put  into  the  Lord's  Prayer 
the  words  'Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread.' 
He  himself  fed  his  disciples,  now  by  the  mira- 
cle of  the  wine  at  the  Marriage  of  Cana,  now 
by  the  bread  when  the  crowd  hearing  him  was 
anhungered,  and  again  by  the  miraculous 
draft  of  fishes  which  Peter  and  John  took 
from  the  Sea  of  Galilee.  It  is  the  part  of  the 
master  to  feed  his  people — and  he  who  would 
win  the  heart  must  also  care  for  the  body's 
needs.  There  is  a  spiritual  bond  between  the 
giver  of  bread  and  the  man  to  whom  it  is  given 
— ^we  did  not  say  that  to  those  who  disagreed 
with  us;  they  might  have  called  us  *  delightful 
evangelists,'  after  having  called  us  'delightful 
philanthropists.'  But  these  are  points  of  view 
which  we  may  acknowledge  as  we  sit  here  by 
the  fireside,  friends  together,  resting  after  a 
long  task,  and  wishing,  as  we  look  back  on 
what  is  past,  to  see  clearly  and  comprehen- 
sively." And  then  she  added,  with  a  shade  of 
timidity:  "Please  excuse  my  evangelical  di- 
gression. " 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       131 

"It  was  very  welcome/'  said  Morton.  "We 
cannot  have  too  many  points  of  view.  But  to 
go  back  to  what  I  was  saying — the  Germans, 
once  their  army  was  fed,  would  not  have  taken 
bread  out  of  the  mouths  of  German  women 
and  children  to  hand  it  over  to  French  chil- 
dren whose  fathers  refused  to  work.  They 
would  have  carried  out  a  final  'atrocity'  with 
the  complacency  of  Pharisees,  justifying  it  in 
their  own  eyes,  as  they  had  done  in  other  cases, 
by  saying:  'It  was  the  fault  of  the  people 
themselves — ^we  offered  them  plenty  of  food 
if  they  would  work,  but  they  refused.'  This 
refusal  to  work  was  the  outward  manifesta- 
tion of  a  resistance  which  forced  their  masters 
to  be  continually  aware  that  their  power  had 
a  limit.  Even  if,  in  particular  cases,  the  will  of 
an  obstinate  'rebel'  broke  under  the  sufferings 
to  which  he  was  subjected,  the  general  resis- 
tance continued. 

"We  have  seen  the  women  who  would  not 
sew  sacks  to  hold  earth  for  the  protection  of 
the  German  trenches;  poor  'rebels,'  with  hag- 
gard looks  and  colorless  lips;  their  only  rebel- 
lion was  to  fold  the  thin  hands  which  had 
once  worked  so  diligently  and  were  now  weak 
from  hunger.  It  gave  them  new  courage  to 


132  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

know  that  they  and  their  children  would  not 
be  obHged  to  eat  German  bread. 

"And,  after  all,"  Morton  went  on,  appar- 
ently somewhat  afraid  lest  he  might  have 
been  too  much  carried  away  by  what  he  was 
saying,  "those  differences  of  opinion  seem  al- 
most as  remote  as  the  old  scholastic  disputes; 
it  matters  little  now  how  the  supplies  came; 
we  had  many  anxious  moments,  but  the 
C.  R.  B.  managed  somehow  to  find  the  neces- 
sary millions,  the  ships,  and  the  supplies.  In 
the  darkest  hours,  when  we  had  begun  to 
whisper  'famine'  to  one  another — as  you 
know  we  did,  Chevrillon — ^the  tension  broke, 
and  the  wheat  arrived." 

"Then  your  C.  R.  B.  is  the  phoenix  of  the 
war,"  said  Daisy. 

"You  may  well  say  so,"  said  Morton.  "She 
sprang  up  from  her  ashes  not  once  but  a 
dozen  times,  and,  as  Hoover  has  told  you,  we 
were  able  to  see  that  the  flour,  or  rather  the 
bread,  reached  the  mouths  for  which  it  was 
intended.  Then  the  Germans  blamed  us  again, 
turning  their  grievance  another  way  round  by 
saying:  'Since  you  feed  these  people  who  will 
not  work  for  us,  you  are  taking  their  part 
against  us.'"  Morton  rose  and  stretched  his 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       133 

arms  with  a  gesture  of  infinite  relief:  "Thank 
God  we  are  neutrals  no  longer ! — ^neutrality  is 
a  poor  job  for  any  man/' 

He  sat  down  again  and  took  from  his  pocket 
a  small  printed  sheet,  which  he  unfolded  care- 
fully and  laid  upon  the  table. 

"You  have  all  seen  facsimiles  of  the  posters, 
meant  to  terrorize  the  French  and  Belgians, 
which  the  Germans  stuck  up  on  the  walls  of 
the  Town  Halls  wherever  they  went;  the  words 
'Death,'  'Shooting,'  were  always  conspicuous, 
and  we  became  quite  used  to  their  threats. 
But  perhaps  you  may  not  have  seen  this  little 
notice;  it  is  very  small,  modestly  white,  and 
altogether  mild-looking;  it  speaks  with  the  in- 
sidious voice  of  Mephistopheles,  breathing 
temptation  in  a  whisper.  It  is  addressed  to  the 
workers  in  the  Belgian  mines,  and  invites 
them  to  go  to  Germany,  to  work  in  factories 
there.  Each  workman  is  promised  twenty 
francs  before  he  starts,  all  his  expenses  are  to 
be  paid,  and  on  his  arrival  he  will  receive  the 
same  wages  as  German  workmen  of  the  same 
class.  Furthermore,  sums  varying  from  eighty 
to  a  hundred  and  twenty  francs  a  month,  ac- 
cording to  the  number  of  his  children,  are 
promised  to  his  family  during  his  absence. 


134  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

His  household  is  to  be  protected  and  looked 
after  by  the  Kommandatur,  the  first  payment 
to  be  made  three  days  after  the  head  of  the 
family  has  left." 

We  passed  the  crumpled  bit  of  paper  from 
one  to  the  other.  It  looked  as  deadly  as  the 
big  green  and  red  posters  which  used  to  glare 
at  the  Belgians  and  French  like  bale-fires 
from  the  doorways  of  the  Kommandaturs. 

On  the  table,  scattered  among  blue  reports 
bristling  with  figures,  were  various  proclama- 
tions, valuable  as  testimony,  which  had  been 
smuggled  out  of  France  and  Belgium  by  trav- 
ellers whose  names,  for  obvious  reasons,  were 
withheld.  The  first,  dated  from  Brussels  in 
October,  1915,  announced  that  death-sen- 
tences had  been  pronounced  by  a  court  mar- 
tial on  three  men  and  three  women,  for  "or- 
ganized treason"  on  their  part,  and  after  the 
list  of  the  condemned  came  the  words:  "In 
the  cases  of  Bancq*  and  Edith  Cavell,  sen- 
tence already  has  been  carried  out." 

"It  is  an  unheard-of  use  of  the  word  'trea- 
son,' "  said  Daisy.  "One  only  *  betrays'  one's 
country  or  a  friend.  Are  you  sure  the  word 
*  treason'  was  correctly  translated  ?" 

*  Wrongly  spelt  in  proclamation;  his  name  was  Baucq. 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       135 

"You  forget,"  said  Morton,  "that  these 
proclamations  were  printed  in  French." 

"So  they  were,"  said  Daisy.  "Sometimes  I 
ask  myself  whether  I  am  awake  or  dreaming, 
whether  I  have  not  Hved  another  life  before 
this  one,  and  if  these  Germans  can  really  be 
of  the  same  race  as  those  whom  I  have  seen  at 
the  theatre  in  Berlin,  aroused  to  enthusiasm 
over  the  old-time  independence  of  Flanders.  I 
remember  the  applause  when  Egmont,  wak- 
ened at  dawn  in  his  prison-cell  at  Brussels,  sat 
upright,  Hstened  quietly  to  the  sentence  con- 
demning him  to  death  *for  treason,'  and  then 
said  to  Silva:  *Go  tell  thy  father  that  he 
neither  deceives  me  nor  the  world' — 'das  er 
weder  mich  noch  die  Welt  belugt.'  And  we 
learned  Egmont's  last  words  at  school.  When 
he  was  about  to  die  he  said:  'I  give  my  life 
for  the  cause  of  liberty.  Enemies  surround  you 
on  every  side,  but  be  of  good  cheer,  my  friends, 
for  your  fathers  and  mothers,  your  wives  and 
children,  are  behind  you.  A  cruel  edict  of  their 
masters  may  oppress  their  bodies,  but  it  can- 
not crush  their  souls.  For  the  sake  of  all  you 
hold  most  dear,  follow  my  example  and  die 
with  a  high  heart.'" 

She  quoted  these  words  in  a  low  voice,  as 


136  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

if  sending  her  memory  back  to  her  school-days 
in  order  to  recollect  what  Goethe  had  put  into 
the  mouth  of  another  prisoner  at  Brussels, 
and  added:  "Goethe  and  Schiller,  the  true 
heroes  of  German  thought,  bore  witness  long 
ago  in  Germany,  and  for  the  German  people, 
to  the  greatness  of  the  men  and  women  who 
are  waked  in  their  prisons  to-day  to  hear  that 
they  are  to  die  'for  treason.'  " 

PROCLAMATION 

The  Tribunal  of  the  Imperial  German  War  Council, 
sitting  at  Brussels,  has  pronounced  the  following  sen- 
tences: 

Condemned  to  death,  for  organized  treason: 
Edith  Cavell,  teacher  at  Brussels. 
Philippe  Bancq,  architect  at  Brussels. 
Jeanne  de  Belleville,  of  Montignies. 
Louise  Thuiliez,*  professor  at  Lille. 
Louis  Severin,  pharmacist  at  Brussels. 
Albert  Libiez,  lawyer  at  Mons. 
Condemned  to  fifteen  years'  hard  labor  for  the  same 
reason : 
Hermann  Capiau,  engineer  at  Wasmes. 
Ada  BoDART,  at  Brussels. 
Georges  Derveau,  pharmacist  at  Paturages. 
Mary  de  Croy,  at  Bellignies. 
During  the  same  session  the  War  Council  pronounced 
*  Her  name  was  Thulicz. 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       137 

sentences  of  imprisonment  and  of  hard  labor,  varying 
in  length  from  two  to  eight  years,  on  seventeen  other 
prisoners  accused  of  treason  against  the  Imperial 
Armies. 

In  the  cases  of  Bancq  and  Edith  Cavell,  sentence 
has  been  already  carried  out. 

The  Governor-General  of  Brussels  calls  the  atten- 
tion of  the  public  to  these  facts,  in  order  that  they  may 
serve  as  a  warning. 

General  Von  Bissing, 
Governor  of  the  City, 

Brussels,  October  12,  191 5. 

PROCLAMATION 
OF  THE  German  Military  Commander  of  Lille 

The  attitude  of  England  makes  feeding  the  popula- 
tion increasingly  difficult. 

In  order  to  lessen  suffering,  the  German  authorities 
recently  asked  for  volunteers  to  work  in  the  fields. 
This  offer  did  not  meet  with  the  success  which  was 
expected. 

It  is  therefore  ordered  that  the  inhabitants  shall  be 
evacuated  and  moved  into  the  country.  They  will  be 
sent  into  the  occupied  territory  in  France,  far  behind 
the  front,  where  they  will  be  engaged  in  agriculture, 
and  not  in  work  for  the  armies. 

By  this  means  they  will  have  an  opportunity  to  pro- 
vide for  themselves. 

In  case  of  necessity  they  may  be  fed  from  the  Ger- 
man depots. 

Each  person  evacuated  may  take  with  him  30  kilo- 


138  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

grams  weight  of  baggage  (kitchen  utensils,  clothing, 
etc.),  which  he  will  do  well  to  prepare  at  once. 

I  therefore  order  that,  until  further  notice,  no  one 
shall  change  his  domicile.  Furthermore,  no  one  shall 
leave  his  legal  domicile  between  9  o'clock  at  night  and 
6  o'clock  in  the  morning  (German  time),  unless  he  is 
provided  with  a  proper  permit  so  to  do. 

As  this  measure  is  irrevocable  it  will  be  for  the  inter- 
est of  the  population  to  remain  quiet  and  submissive. 

The  Commander. 
Lille,  April,  1916. 

"Goethe  and  Schiller,"  said  Morton,  "be- 
longed still  to  the  small  Germany  of  separate 
states.  It  was  by  their  thought,  and  not  by 
force  of  arms,  that  they  wished  to  influence 
the  world.  But  do  not  let  us  consider  the 
poets;  there  is  no  question  of  poetry  now,  nor 
of  an  heroic  past.  Everything  is  'the  present' 
and  'reality.'  Here  is  something  else,"  he  said, 
taking  from  among  the  scattered  papers  a 
large  green  poster,  quite  new,  as  if  it  had  only 
come  from  the  printer  that  morning.  "Here  is 
a  'notice'  of  which  you  have  heard  a  great 
deal;  a  'notice'  does  not  seem  very  important. 
This  one  was  posted  up  at  Lille;  look  at  the 
date,"  and  he  pointed  to  it:  "'April,  1916.'  It 
was  on  Easter  Sunday  that  this  paper  was 
placarded  on  the  doors.  In  the  suburbs  of 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       139 

Roubaix  the  German  soldiers  were  sticking 
it  up  hurriedly  on  almost  every  door." 
We  read: 

NOTICE 

All  inmates  of  this  house,  excepting  old  men  and 
women,  and  children  under  fourteen  with  their  mothers, 
must  get  ready  to  be  deported  within  an  hour  and  a  half. 

An  officer  will  have  the  final  decision  as  to  those  who 
are  to  be  taken  to  the  assembly  camps.  In  order  that 
he  may  do  so,  all  the  inmates  of  the  house  shall  stand 
together  outside  it;  in  case  of  bad  weather  they  will  be 
allowed  to  stand  in  the  entry,  the  house-door  to  be 
kept  open.  No  protests  will  be  considered.  No  inmate 
of  the  house,  including  those  who  are  not  to  be  de- 
ported, may  leave  it  before  eight  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing (German  time). 

Each  person  shall  have  the  right  to  30  kilograms 
weight  of  baggage;  in  case  of  overweight,  that  person's 
baggage  will  be  rejected  without  further  consideration. 
The  baggage  of  each  person  must  be  in  a  separate  par- 
cel, with  a  legible  address  firmly  affixed  thereto;  such 
address  to  consist  of  the  owner's  name  in  full  and  the 
number  of  his  identification  card. 

It  is  absolutely  necessary  that  each  person  shall  pro- 
vide himself  with  utensils  for  eating  and  drinking,  as 
well  as  a  woollen  blanket,  stout  shoes,  and  undercloth- 
ing. Each  person  must  wear  his  identification  card. 
Any  one  attempting  to  avoid  deportation  will  be  rigor- 
ously punished.  r-  x^ 

^  Etappen-Kommandatur. 

Lille,  April,  1916. 


140  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

Morton  put  the  two  notices  side  by  side,  so 
that  we  could  see  them  at  the  same  time,  the 
one  promising  good  wages  and  the  fostering 
care  of  the  authorities  for  the  household  of 
the  absent  worker,  the  other  ordering  whole- 
sale deportations. 

"You  see  both  their  methods,''  he  said. 
"They  were  followed  at  the  same  time,  and 
by  the  hardship  of  one  you  may  judge  of  the 
temptation  offered  by  the  other." 

"But  they  must  be  demons,"  said  Mrs. 
Felder,  and  she  pronounced  the  word  as  if  it 
came  from  the  depths  of  her  soul.  It  was  the 
first  time  she  had  spoken  during  the  evening; 
her  soft  eyes,  which  were  sometimes  those  of 
a  seeress,  had  been  fixed  on  Morton. 

"This,  then,"  she  went  on,  "is  what  you 
have  seen  in  France,  in  the  country  which  we 
have  considered  as  our  brother,  in  the  coun- 
try of  liberty !  Did  you  actually  see  these  de- 
portations .?" 

"Certainly,"  said  Mrs.  Vernon.  "For  my 
own  part,  I  had  seen  one  day,  a  long  time 
ago,  at  Marrakech,  in  an  out-of-the-way  cor- 
ner of  the  bazaars,  a  trader  bringing  in  his 
new  riches — a  troop  of  slaves,  men,  women, 
and  young  girls.  I  thought  then  I  had  never 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       141 

in  my  life  seen  anything  more  inhuman;  but 
now  it  seems  to  me  only  like  a  sort  of  biblical 
vision  of  primitive  Oriental  life,  since  we  have 
seen,  in  a  great  industrial  city  of  France,  Ger- 
man officers,  with  waxed  mustaches  and  pol- 
ished boots,  dragging  Frenchwomen  toward 
the  railway-stations — Frenchwomen  who  had 
been  torn  from  their  families  and  homes  on 
that  Easter  night. 

"In  the  country  we  sometimes  met  a  little 
procession  of  these  deported  ones.  The  poor 
souls  were  very  quiet,  very  simple — ^it  was 
from  them  we  learned  to  speak  calmly  when 
our  hearts  were  on  fire.  Their  heavy  feet  shuf- 
fled in  the  dust;  their  backs  were  bent  under 
the  weight  of  their  burdens;  their  thoughts 
were  only  of  their  misery.  Some  of  the  women 
were  crying.  We  stopped  our  motor-cars,  and 
they  looked  at  us  anxiously  as  they  went  by, 
as  if  hoping  that  we  might  be  able  to  help 
them.  They  could  not  know,  as  they  saw  us 
watching  them  with  calm  curiosity  from  our 
carriages,  that  we,  the  witnesses  of  their  woe, 
would  raise  a  cry  of  horror  and  condemnation 
which  would  for  the  first  time  intimidate  their 
oppressors  and  check  this  revival  of  slavery. 

"For  it  was  an  American  named  Poland, 


142  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

one  of  the  heads  of  our  C.  R.  B.,  who  was  the 
first  to  shame  the  German  military  leaders 
out  of  these  deportations.  When  he  first  pro- 
tested against  them  to  one  of  the  generals 
high  in  authority  at  the  General  Head- 
quarters, this  chief  pretended  that  he  did  not 
believe  such  tales.  'They  were  due  to  the 
heated  imagination  of  neutrals;  all  philan- 
thropists were  alarmists;  we  saw  persecution 
everywhere.'  The  general  ordered  an  investi- 
gation, and  Poland  saw  the  officers  who  had 
taken  part  in  the  deportations  and  signed  the 
'notices'  deny  them  pointblank,  or  else  have 
conveniently  hazy  recollections.  When  Poland 
finally  pushed  them  to  the  wall,  and  they  had 
to  confess  what  they  had  done,  the  general 
was,  or  made  believe  to  be,  very  angry,  and 
not  long  after  that  the  order  was  revoked  both 
in  the  occupied  zone  and  in  that  where  the 
army  was  in  movement.  Freedom  within  their 
own  households,  that  last  treasure  of  the  op- 
pressed, was  given  to  your  fellow  country- 
men; the  mother  might  keep  her  daughter,  the 
daughter  stay  with  her  mother.  But  when  the 
sons  reached  the  age  at  which  all  mothers,  at 
all  times,  have  been  proud  of  their  boys,  then 
for  them  came  deportation." 

"We  have  been  so  absorbed  in  watching 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       143 

the  sudden  turns  of  fortune  in  the  fighting," 
said  Daisy,  "that  we  have  thought  less  about 
what  we  could  not  see,  what  was  going  on 
behind  a  wall;  we  have  not  known  enough 
about  the  suffering  back  of  the  lines/' 

"The  wall  is  forbidding,"  said  Morton,  "for- 
bidding and  well  guarded,  and  once  within 
the  walled  territory  there  are  yet  other  en- 
closures. In  going  from  Belgium  to  Holland, 
as  one  crosses  a  strip  of  empty  land,  fenced  on 
either  side  with  a  latticework  of  barbed  wire 
and  electrified  cables  one  feels  already  a 
prisoner.  For  those  of  us  who  were  newcom- 
ers, having  only  landed  at  Rotterdam  that 
same  morning,  the  impression  was  very  strik- 
ing. German  sentinels,  carrying  their  rifles, 
and  with  pistols  in  their  belts,  paced  to  and 
fro  in  the  strip  of  flat,  damp  country,  guard- 
ing the  wires  charged  with  instant  death  to 
any  touch.  It  is  a  hunting-ground  which  is 
uncommonly  well  preserved;  the  sentinel,  who 
comes  with  his  hand  at  the  salute  to  examine 
our  passports,  will  open  the  barriers  for  us  if 
he  finds  them  in  order,  but  one  has  left  free- 
dom behind." 

"And  yet,"  said  Mrs.  Vernon,  "that  is  only 
occupied  territory." 

"Yes,"  said  Morton.  "It  is  a  bit  of  Belgium 


144  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

which  is  still  divided  into  provinces.  Fifty- 
thousand  Germans  are  enough  to  'hold'  the 
country;  they  'occupy'  it,  they  keep  watch, 
they  arrest  patriots  and  condemn  them  to 
death.  To  them  the  young  Belgians  who  try 
to  pass  the  barriers  in  order  to  fight  are 
game-birds  of  war,  to  be  slain  with  the  deadly 
electric  current.  We  have  known  of  boys 
caught  like  sparrows  in  a  net — ^that  happens 
every  day.  All  this  is  terrible  enough,  and  yet 
it  is  only  'occupation.'  If  one  goes  from 
Belgium  into  France,  as  we  did  each  week, 
the  impression  was  different  again.  Near  the 
frontier  there  was  another  zone  to  be  passed, 
more  sentinels  pacing  the  fields.  There  we 
came  into  the  'zone  of  action,'  in  which 
two  millions  and  a  half  of  German  soldiers 
prepared  for  and  made  war  in  a  territory  in- 
habited by  two  millions  and  a  half  of  French 
people.  The  numbers  were  even.  In  Belgium 
a  gap  had  been  made  in  the  beginning,  and  the 
track  of  the  invasion  was  marked  by  ruins, 
but  it  was  on  the  land  of  France,  divided  into 
as  many  compartments  as  there  were  German 
armies  holding  them,  that  the  torrent  over- 
flowed. Etappen-Gebiet — ^the  word  sounds  like 
the  crack  of  a  pistol.  The  air  of  liberty  is  so 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       145 

rarefied  that  one  can  scarcely  breathe;  just 
think  of  it — of  all  the  German  armies  in- 
trenched or  fighting,  with  their  van  and  rear 
guards,  crowded  into  this  broken-off  corner  of 
France.  There  is  not  a  village,  no  matter  how 
small  and  how  far  behind  the  German  lines, 
which  has  not  its  German  cantonment — ^its 
German  soldiers  billeted  on  Frenchmen — or  on 
Frenchwomen.  They  are  everywhere.  For  each 
Frenchman  there  is  a  German  under  arms — 
the  count  is  easily  made — and  this  at  a  time 
and  in  a  war  in  which  every  method  of  pres- 
sure has  been  carefully  studied  and  pitilessly 
applied.  Belgium  could  sometimes  mock  her 
'occupiers'  with  the  brave  laugh  of  the  weak- 
ling who  turns  the  giant  into  ridicule — ^but  in 
the  'zone  of  action'  in  France  no  one  evef 
laughed.  Let  us  put  it  in  another  way — ^there 
were  two  suspicious  German  eyes  spying  on 
every  French  man,  woman,  or  child.  Those 
eyes  saw  everything — ^in  that,  as  in  everything 
else,  the  German  thought  himself  godlike — and 
punishment  might  follow  a  laugh,  a  smile,  or 
even  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders. 

"We  ourselves  were  not  free  in  the  zone  of 
action.  We  found  friends  among  the  Belgians, 
and  the  close  community  of  our  work  allowed 


146  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

US  to  know  them  well.  They  used  to  ask  us  to 
dine  with  them  sometimes  at  the  week-ends, 
and  when  our  work  was  done  we  sometimes 
played  tennis  on  their  lawns  with  their  daugh- 
ters. Even  during  the  most  tragic  experience 
every  hour  is  not  sad. 

"But  in  the  French  zone  of  action  we  could 
have  no  friends.  Various  sign-boards  showed 
us  that  we  were  in  the  empire  of  destruction 
as  soon  as  we  came  into  it.  For  instance,  a 
very  polite  German  officer  got  into  our  rail- 
way-carriage and  took  possession  of  us.  It 
had  been  agreed  that  we  were  to  superintend 
in  all  centres  of  distribution,  but  we  were 
superintendents  who  were  superintended — ^we 
were  suspects.  Each  of  us  had  a  German  officer 
as  a  constant  companion.  We  called  him  our 
*  nurse';  we  also  called  him  our  'man  Friday,' 
for  we  felt  like  Robinson  Crusoe  on  his  desert 
island.  We  could  never  speak  to  a  Frenchman 
freely  or  alone;  the  big  ears  of  the  German 
officer  were  always  wide  open.  In  the  course 
of  our  rounds  we  passed  the  night  in  the  same 
hotel  with  him,  and  sometimes  in  the  same 
room;  we  took  our  meals  at  the  same  table; 
at  the  meetings  of  the  French  committees  the 
German  officer  never  left  our  side.  We  were  as 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR        147 

inseparable  as  a  man  and  his  shadow.  We 
were  young,  and  we  were  not  there  to  grum- 
ble. As  long  as  the  Germans  kept  their  word 
and  did  not  lay  hands  on  any  of  the  imported 
wheat,  it  was  our  business  to  keep  silent.  It 
was  also  part  of  our  instructions  from  Hoover: 
'You  have  nothing  to  do  there  except  to  see 
that  the  wheat  arrives,  that  it  is  made  into 
bread,  and  the  bread  eaten  by  those  for  whom 
it  was  meant.  If  it  is  hard  to  say  nothing, 
remember  that  silence  is  the  price  of  food  for 
those  people.' 

"I  remember  arriving  once  in  the  little  vil- 
lage of .  When  I  had  last  seen  it,  a  month 

before,  it  was  intact  beside  its  river,  but  when 
our  motor-car  stopped  that  morning  in  the 
square  in  front  of  the  church,  I  saw  that  three 
houses  had  just  been  burned  down;  their  cal- 
cined walls  had  fallen  in.  Some  women  who 
were  beating  their  linen  at  the  public  washing- 
place  turned  their  heads  away  when  they 
caught  sight  of  the  German  uniform.  With  my 
'Friday'  we  made  our  visits  to  the  president 
of  the  French  committee,  at  the  communal 
storehouse.  We  counted  the  sacks  of  flour 
which  had  been  received  the  night  before,  and 
we  looked  into  houses  here  and  there  to  see  if 


«<1 


148  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

our  distributions  had  been  regularly  made. 
Everything  took  place  as  if  the  village  did  not 
bear  the  marks  of  recent  violence.  I  tried  to 
surprise  some  expression  on  the  faces  of  the 
French  committee,  but  they  were  gloomy  and 
strained;  they  only  spoke  of  trifling  matters 
relating  to  the  food  supply.  As  for  me,  I  had 
no  right  to  put  any  questions;  I  was  restricted 
to  a  vocabulary  which  would  go  Into  two  pages 
of  a  Berlitz  manual: 

Have  you  received  the  supplies  ?' 
'How  many  sacks  were  there .?' 
"'Have  you  returned  the  sacks  ?* 
"'Have  you  destroyed  the  tin  boxes  ?' 
"There  were  some  moments  of  silence  which 
seemed  suffocating.  Through  the  window  I 
could  see  the  breaches  in  what  had  been,  but 
a  month  before,  a  charming  square  of  houses 
around  the  church.  That  particular  day  'my 
oflS^cer'  did  not  leave  me  for  an  instant,  and 
when  we  met  some  women,  as  we  went  out,  I 
saw  his  blue  eyes  looking  hard  at  them.  His 
glance  was  like  the  glint  of  a  bayonet.  The 
women  passed  silently,  and  I  felt  that  they 
were  like  wounded  animals  who  are  unable  to 
tell  why  they  suffer. 

"When  we  were  back  again  in  the  motor, 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       149 

between  the  two  soldiers  with  their  loaded 
rifles  who  occupied  its  corners,  my  officer  lit  a 
cigar.  He  had  become  affable  and  altogether 
human  again.  The  fresh  air,  the  swift  motion 
of  the  car,  the  ending  of  a  task,  all  combined 
to  put  him  in  a  good  humor,  and  he  said  to 
me:  'If  you  are  not  on  duty  to-morrow  we 
might  have  some  shooting,  if  you  like.  Thanks 
to  our  excellent  organization,  the  game  has  not 
been  molested;  there  are  plenty  of  partridges 
in  these  fields.' 

"'Perhaps,'  I  said;  'but  tell  me,  W.,  what 
happened  at ?' 

"'Oh,  only  a  punitive  measure,'  he  an- 
swered, and  his  face  again  assumed  the  hard 
expression  that  it  had  worn  during  our  visit, 
as  he  puffed  hard  at  his  cigar.  I  never  found 
out  why  those  three  houses  were  set  on  fire, 
but  later  I  became  familiar  with  such  'acci- 
dents.' Now  it  was  a  house,  or  a  little  group 
of  houses,  which  were  miissing  in  a  village; 
again  it  was  a  few  men,  or  women,  or  priests. 
...  In  the  small  town  of  N.  we  found  the 
room  empty  in  which  the  president  of  the 
local  committee,  who  was  also  the  mayor, 
usually  received  us.  Our  meeting  took  place 
in  a  neighboring  room,  without  any  allusion 


150  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

to  the  absence  of  the  president,  but  there,  at 
any  rate,  we  found  out  through  a  notice 
posted  on  the  wall  of  the  town  hall  that  he 
had  been  condemned  to  death  'for  treason/ 
The  time  is  not  yet  come  when  we  may  speak 
more  openly,  but  let  us  remember  that  in  that 
part  of  the  world  men  and  women  are  only 
hostages.  Sometimes  as  an  act  of  clemency  the 
penalty  of  death  is  commuted  to  hard  labor. 
"I  heard  afterward  that  Monsieur  X.  was 
already  serving  his  sentence  in  Germany, 
among  common  criminals,  with  his  head 
shaven  and  wearing  the  convict's  jacket  and 
cap,  marked  with  his  prison  number.  He  was 
plaiting  baskets  for  German  shells,  and  at 
night  he  was  locked  into  a  cage  made  of  iron 
bars.  But  we  only  knew  that  later;  the  only 
answer  at  the  time  was  'a  punitive  measure.' 
Another  time  it  was  a  cure  who  had  disap- 
peared; for  those  who  are  invaded  have  their 
'missing'  as  well  as  the  troops;  he  also  had 
been  condemned  to  death  by  a  court  martial 
'for  treason,'  the  sentence  being  commuted 
into  penal  servitude  in  Germany.  In  his  spir- 
itual capacity  he  had  helped  his  parishioners 
to  solve  a  difficult  case  of  conscience — ought 
one  to  take  one's  copper  to  the  Kommandatur 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       151 

or  not  ?  The  old  cure  said  from  the  pulpit  at 
high  mass:  'Resistance  is  impossible;  when 
they  come  to  your  house,  let  them  take  what 
they  can  find — ^but/  said  the  old  man  gently, 
*do  not  let  them  find  more  than  you  can  help/ 
His  flock  understood  him,  and  during  the  night 
all  their  saucepans  and  ancient  warming-pans 
were  buried  or  thrown  into  the  Meuse.  The 
old  priest  was  caught  in  the  act  of  wheeling 
his  own  coppers  through  the  woods  on  a  bar- 
row, in  the  path  to  the  river.  I  knew  that 
through  my  'Friday,'  who  was  so  indignant 
about  the  'traitor'  that  he  spoke  out  for  once. 
Riveted  as  we  were  to  each  other,  sometimes 
by  night  as  well  as  by  day,  we  used  to  talk; 
we  only  escaped  from  this  Siamese  life  on 
Thursdays,  when  we  went  to  make  our  report 
at  our  committee  meetings  in  Brussels,  which 
left  us  six  days  of  the  week  in  which  to  hear 
and  discuss  German  theories  about  the  Ger- 
man race.  The  'Fridays'  might  be  changed 
but  the  theories  never;  our  officers  loved  to 
intoxicate  themselves  with  their  own  beliefs, 
as  a  fanatic  repeats  his  formula  to  himself 
over  and  over.  By  finding  the  same  ideas  in- 
cessantly reiterated  in  their  newspapers,  their 
pamphlets,  their  books,  and  their  conversa- 


152  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

tions,  one  comes  to  know  that  the  German 
brain  is  an  anvil  for  German  thought. 

"You  say  in  your  newspapers  that  they  are 
barbarians,  but  you  are  mistaken,  as  our 
friend  Harder  told  you  the  other  day;  this  war 
has  taught  us  that  they  are  Germans.  The 
difference  is  great.  The  barbarian  was  a  big 
child  in  a  world  of  shadows,  but  these  men 
see  very  clearly  what  they  destroy  and  why 
they  destroy  it.  First  it  is  the  riches  of  a 
country,  then  the  source  of  that  riches,  men, 
land,  and  machinery.  We  have  seen  them 
calmly  seated,  resting  themselves  and  reason- 
ing about  the  war,  their  future  zukunfty  their 
harshness  and  their  punitive  measures,  while 
they  drank  the  wines  of  France  temperately 
and  with  appreciation.  I  have  watched  them 
as  they  followed  up  their  forecasts,  striking 
the  table  with  their  fists  until  the  glasses 
danced  upon  the  trays.  They  would  say  to  us 
in  English:  ^And  if  it  is  not  this  time,  it  will 
be  next  time,  and  if  not  next  time,  then  the 
time  after.'  You  may  as  well  be  prepared,  for 
they  have  plenty  of  patience.  If  man  is  a  vague 
and  changeable  being,  then  the  German  is  not 
a  man. 

"During  our  table-talk  we  Robinson  Cru- 


THE  AMERICANS  IN -THE  WAR       153 

soes  became  fairly  satiated  with  their  ideas 
of  the  selection  and  superiority  of  the  Teu- 
tonic race.  Nothing  could  be  feebler  than 
these  bold  paradoxes  strained  through  ordi- 
nary German  minds,  always  followed  by  abuse 
of  the  Americans:  'We  were  furnishing  France 
with  munitions';  *we  were  no  longer  neutral'; 
*we  were  prolonging  the  war.'  There  were 
some  lively  arguments  at  our  dinner-tables. 
We  have  seen  the  entry  of  the  United  States 
into  the  war;  we  have  also  discussed  it  before- 
hand. They  would  never  believe  in  it;  until  the 
very  last  day  they  thought  it  was  only  our 
American  bluff.  'It  would  be  a  crime/  they 
said;  'it  would  make  the  war  last  indefinitely.* 
They  were  gamblers  who  thought  they  had 
won  the  game;  they  were  quite  ready  to  make 
peace,  and  to  embrace  Belgium  and  after- 
ward France,  both  of  whom  they  loved,  after 
their  fashion.  They  loved  France  especially, 
but  evilly  and  covetously,  as  a  brutal  man 
loves  a  charming  woman  who  flies  from  him 
when  he  comes  near  her.  It  was  a  mixture  of 
love  and  anger.  I  have  often  seen  them,  when 
it  was  time  to  rest  at  the  end  of  one  of  our 
day-long  journeys  in  summer,  taking  their 
bitters  in  front  of  one  of  your  cafes.  They 


154  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

seemed  to  breathe  the  air  of  France  with  sen- 
sual deHght,  while  they  said :  '  Poor  France ! 
when  will  the  war  come  to  an  end  ?'  During 
our  stay  with  them  we  often  saw  long  lines  of 
carts  pass  by,  drawn  by  slow  and  heavy-footed 
Russian  prisoners,  and  surrounded  by  German 
soldiers.  It  was  a  familiar  sight  on  your  east- 
ern roads.  The  carts  were  laden  with  tree- 
trunks,  smooth  and  shiny,  made  green  or 
golden  by  the  mosses  still  clinging  to  them. 

"Your  French  forests  went  to  Germany  in 
gangs,  under  guard,  like  prisoners,  and  the 
German  officers  would  repeat:  'Poor  France !' 
They  spoke  sincerely,  as  an  executioner  who 
knows  that  nothing  will  make  his  hand  trem- 
ble might  speak  of  a  woman  whose  beautiful 
hair  he  has  just  seen  cut  off,  and  who  is  to  be 
delivered  to  him  for  torture.  Poor  France ! 
Sometimes,  while  these  loads  of  recently  felled 
trees  were  going  by,  the  air  was  full  of  the 
smell  of  their  fresh  sap,  and  one  could  see  the 
old  French  wood-cutters  going  hurriedly  into 
their  houses  and  shutting  their  doors.  .  .  . 
Then,  as  if  to  dispel  any  unpleasant  feeling, 
our  officers  would  call  the  children  who  were 
always  dawdling  on  the  door-steps,  tell  them 
funny  stories  in  French,  give  them  bright  new 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       155 

pfennigs,  pull  their  ears  gently,  or  pat  their 
thick  hair.  And  then,  as  if  to  say,  *How  easy  it 
would  be!'  they  would  point  to  the  German 
soldiers  off  duty  and  resting,  who  were  grin- 
ning sheepishly  at  the  young  women  as  they 
passed,  or  even — ^we  may  speak  out,  may  we 
not  ? — dandling  paternally  in  their  arms  big 
solemn-looking  babies  .  .  .  the  sad  children  of 
invasion." 

Morton  stopped  suddenly,  as  if  he  were 
afraid  he  had  wounded  the  intimate  national 
feelings  of  the  French  people  who  were  listen- 
ing to  him.  The  subject  dropped.  Mrs.  Felder's 
eyes  were  full  of  tears;  Daisy,  usually  so  ready 
to  talk,  kept  silence;  Chevrillon  got  up  to  light 
the  alcohol  lamp  in  time  for  tea. 

There  was  an  awkward  pause  for  a  moment, 
broken  by  Mrs.  Vernon,  who  said : 

''My  dear  friends,  we  should  not  feel  that 
we  had  the  right  to  touch  your  wounds  if  we 
had  not  by  coming  into  the  war  pledged  our- 
selves to  heal  them.  We  have  been  made  part 
(I  am  using  one  of  the  expressions  of  your 
church,  but  when  one  speaks  of  France  all 
thoughts  become  religious) — ^we  have  been 
made  part  of  your  suffering,  but  now  we  have 
come  to  unite  ourselves  with  France  militant. 


156  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

Is  it  not  true,  Daisy,  that  this  is  the  day  for 
which  we  have  longed  ?  and — I  will  speak 
again  in  terms  of  religion — ^in  order  to  receive 
the  reward  of  our  Redeemer  we  must  have 
shared  his  Passion.  Very  many  of  our  boys  will 
go  into  this  war  as  true  Christians,  feeling 
that  a  work  of  redemption  must  be  accom- 
plished, and  the  whole  world  delivered  from 
evil.  You  have  spoken  often  of  our  material 
civilization — ^you  will  be  surprised  at  the 
amount  of  idealism  to  be  found  among  the 
strong  and  well-grown  young  men  who  are 
coming  to  fight  for  you.  It  is  strange,"  she 
went  on,  as  if  talking  to  herself,  and  trying 
to  make  a  vague  idea  clear,  "it  is  just  the 
reverse  of  the  German  conditions,  where 
transcendental  idealism  has  led  to  material- 
ism of  the  most  ferocious  kind.  But  then,'* 
she  went  on,  as  if  pushing  away  a  puzzling 
problem,  "we  also  are  contradictory.  We  came 
out  here  as  haters  of  war,  as  physicians  who 
had  been  made  immune  to  some  terrible 
plague,  and  were  bringing  remedies  to  its 
victims.  And  now  the  war  has  entered  into 
our  very  blood — ^yes,  even  I,  a  woman,  have 
felt  it,"  and  she  raised  the  hem  of  her  sleeve 
from  her  slender  wrist  with  an  instinctive 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       157 

movement,  as  if  to  show  us  the  mark  of  an 
inoculation.  "It  came  to  me  in  invaded 
France;  it  came  to  others  as  they  sat  here  by 
their  firesides;  it  will  come  to  still  others  in 
America.  The  haters  of  war  now  say  to-day: 
*If  war  can  only  be  destroyed  by  war,  then  let 
us  throw  ourselves  into  the  fight  at  once.' " 

It  was  growing  late,  but  we  found  it  hard 
to  part.  Mrs.  Vernon  was  sailing  for  home 
the  next  day,  to  continue  her  untiring  cam- 
paign for  invaded  France  and  Belgium,  and 
teach  her  friends  the  new  gospel  of  adversity. 

Daisy  was  going  back  to  her  nest  in  Lor- 
raine. ...  At  this  moment,  and  while  Chevril- 
lon  was  making  tea,  Mrs.  Felder  went  to  the 
piano.  There  was  a  sort  of  magnetic  attrac- 
tion between  her  and  it;  she  did  not  sit  down, 
but  as  she  passed  she  stooped  over  the  keys, 
and  drew  from  them  very  faintly  an  adagio 
by  Cesar  Franck. 

Mrs.  Vernon  turned  round  quickly,  saying, 
"Ah,  Nettie  Bell,  do  play  the  first  bars  !"  and 
being  gentle  and  always  attuned  to  music, 
Nettie  Bell  played  them. 

"I  heard  that  for  the  first  time  at  Lille," 
said  Mrs.  Vernon.  "We  had  arrived  that 
morning,  having  gone  through  dead  villages 


158  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

the  day  before,  those  villages  of  the  French 
countryside  from  which  no  smoke  ever  rises 
now.  The  wind  whistled  over  the  bare  plain 
and  on  the  roads  where  it  no  longer  shook 
white  poplars — ^they  had  also  been  carried  off 
into  Germany.  I  was  sad  .  .  .  One  feels  the 
tragic  absence  of  all  personal  liberty  in  that 
region  more  on  some  days  than  on  others.  We 
had  stopped  before  the  storehouse  of  the 
C.  R.  B.,  and  my  husband  discussed  some 
detail  concerning  the  supplies  with  a  German 
officer.  While  I  was  waiting  I  could  look  into 
a  room  on  the  ground  floor  of  a  large  house 
across  the  street;  the  window-curtains  were 
drawn  back,  so  that  I  saw  a  young  woman 
seated  at  her  piano. 

"She  was  reading  from  the  open  sheet  be- 
fore her  as  she  played;  I  could  have  drawn  her 
profile,  which  was  very  delicate  and  almost 
too  sharply  defined.  She  was  in  mourning, 
with  a  small  crape  scarf  drawn  around  her 
shoulders  and  crossed  on  her  bosom.  A  little 
girl  about  three  years  old  was  playing  near 
her,  and  every  now  and  then  she  interfered 
with  her  mother's  music  by  tapping  on  the 
piano  with  tiny  obstinate  fingers.  It  was  just 
an  ordinary  every-day  household  scene,  and 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       159 

yet  I  understood  its  inner  meaning  as  I  saw 
the  wedding-ring,  too  loose  for  its  wearer's  thin 
hand,  and  the  beautiful  face  which  only  the 
chisel  of  suffering  could  have  made  so  spiri- 
tual. I  was  sure  that  in  playing  what  she  did, 
and  as  she  rendered  it,  she  was  pouring  forth 
a  prayer  of  love  and  sorrow;  sometimes  she 
played  the  movement  you  have  just  heard 
with  force  and  passion,  and  then  wearily,  like 
some  one  who  falls  and  struggles  to  her  feet 
again;  she  seemed  almost  like  an  angel  walking 
uncertainly  under  a  weight  of  distress. 

"All  at  once,  as  the  child  persisted  in 
drumming  with  her  fingers  upon  the  keys,  her 
mother  stopped  playing  for  an  instant  and 
very  gently  pushed  the  Httle  thing  away. 

"She  caught  sight  of  me  as  she  did  so,  and 
noticed  that  I  was  looking  at  her.  She  was 
evidently  frightened.  And  then  I  did  the  only 
thing  unbecoming  a  neutral  with  which  I 
have  to  reproach  myself,  I  think,  during  all 
my  stay  in  those  sad  countries — I  pressed  my 
finger  to  my  lips  and  gravely  sent  her  the 
shadowy  ghost  of  a  kiss. 

"She  started,  and  for  the  first  time  I  saw 
her  full  face.  Her  large  gray  eyes,  widely 
opened,  were   two   chalices   full   of  tears.   I 


160  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

looked  at  her  hand,  where  her  wedding-ring 
hung  so  loosely,  and  it  was  as  though  she  had 
said  to  me  in  words:  'This  war  has  made  me  a 
widow.' 

"She  saw  the  German  officer  (a  very  decent 
fellow,  by  the  way,  who  gave  himself  no  end 
of  trouble  to  help  my  husband  in  feeding  what 
he  called  'my  population')  and  drew  herself 
on  one  side,  at  the  same  time  pulling  the  mus- 
lin curtains  across  the  window. 

"That  evening,  as  we  were  returning  in  our 
motor  along  the  dark  road,  we  came  to  the 
crossing  of  two  highways,  where  there  had 
been  fighting  in  1914;  eight  French  soldiers 
lay  buried  there,  some  beside  one  road  and 
some  by  the  other,  and  their  graves  were  in 
the  form  of  a  cross.  I  could  not  help  thinking 
of  the  eyes  I  had  seen  that  morning  brimming 
with  unshed  tears,  and  I  said  to  my  com- 
panion: 'Poor  invaded  France — we  shall  have 
seen  nothing  of  her  soldiers  except  their 
graves.^ 

''He  answered:  'It  Is  almost  impossible  to 
believe  that  fighting  is  going  on  all  the  time; 
a  different  France  is  over  there,  close  to  us, 
on  the  other  side  of  the  zone  of  action.'  And 
he  stretched  out  his  hand.  The  car  rolled  on, 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       161 

and  we  found  ourselves  close  to  trenches  cut 
across  gardens — they  always  look  strangely 
like  the  sunken  roads  of  Brittany.  I  thought 
again  of  the  young  woman  seen  only  for  a 
moment  that  morning,  and  I  stood  up  in  the 
car  in  order  that  I  might  have  a  better  view 
of  the  forest  of  the  Argonne  on  the  horizon, 
as  if  it  were  possible  to  see  from  that  distance 
what  we  Americans  in  invaded  France  have 
never  yet  seen,  and  what  the  French  people 
who  live  there  never,  never  see — French 
troops." 

"I  have  often  had  the  same  feeling,"  said 
Morton.  "Sometimes  we  could  not  help  suf- 
fering from  a  dreary  delusion  that  there  was 
no  more  real  France,  only  men  who  were  old 
or  ailing,  in  the  midst  of  a  multitude  of  women 
and  children.  When  its  young  manhood  is 
drained  out  of  a  country  it  loses  all  vitality — 
and  when  I  say  'young'  I  mean  between  a 
period  which  begins  at  sixteen  and  ends  at 
forty-five.  If  only  we  might  have  seen,  as  we 
toiled  at  our  never-ending  task  of  counting 
and  weighing  sacks  of  wheat  and  flour  for  the 
poor  and  the  sick,  for  women  and  children, 
for  infirm  old  people — even  for  the  insane — if 
only  we  might  have  suddenly  seen  a  young 


162  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

French  soldier,  all  in  horizon-blue,  his  steel 
helmet  on  his  head,  his  rifle  on  his  shoulder, 
looking  at  us  with  bright  eyes " 

"It  would  have  been  a  wonderful  vision," 
said  Daisy. 

"Better  far  than  that,"  said  Mrs.  Vernon. 
"To  those  poor  French  people  who  are  waiting 
there,  in  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow,  oppressed 
by  a  cruel  old  god — it  would  have  been  the 
passing  of  a  young  god  in  his  glory." 

"It  is  perfectly  true,"  said  Morton,  "that 
the  greatest  privation  of  these  people  immured 
in  a  German  jail  is  that  they  can  never  see 
their  own  soldiers.  They  saw  the  mobilization, 
the  movement  of  their  armies  toward  the  east 
and  the  north — ^they  saw  them  retreat — and 
then  night  fell — ^the  outer  darkness — and  they 
were  left  to  be  the  guardians  of  graves. 

"  I  was  at  Lille  one  night  when  French  avi- 
ators dropped  bombs  on  one  of  the  suburbs. 
When  all  their  bombs  had  been  used  up  the 
airmen  flew  over  the  centre  of  the  city,  taking 
no  notice  of  the  enemy  airplanes  which  were 
after  them.  They  had  thrown  bombs  to  the 
Germans,  but  on  their  own  French  they  show- 
ered down  myriads  of  little  papers,  bright  with 
the  national  colors.  It  was  strictly  forbidden 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR        163 

to  open  any  windows,  under  severe  penalties, 
but  as  I  stood  there  in  the  city  square  I  saw 
them  all  opened  at  the  same  time.  The  mitrail- 
leuses were  crackling,  and  the  women  leaning 
out  of  their  windows  tried  to  see  their  Mes- 
siah in  the  heavens — the  airplane  soaring  on 
its  French  wings  in  the  cold  moonlight.  There 
was  an  old  woman  whom  I  had  come  to  know 
well  because  I  used  to  see  her  in  one  of  our 
workrooms,  always  bending  over  her  sewing 
with  a  patient,  tired  face.  I  saw  her  that  night, 
on  the  fourth  floor  of  the  house  where  she 
lived;  she  was  carrying  a  little  sleeping  child, 
and  showing  him  to  the  bird  of  France,  the 
blessed  bird  of  fire,  a  shining  star  in  the  dark- 
ness, shedding  a  mystical  blessing  among  the 
din  of  the  mitrailleuses  and  the  droning  of  the 
planes.  Shells  were  falling  and  shrapnel  was 
scattered  in  the  square,  but  one  felt  that  a 
universal  rejoicing,  only  half-subdued,  was 
flowing  from  every  window  into  the  night." 

"I  was  right,"  said  Mrs.  Vernon.  "It  was 
the  passing  of  the  young  god." 

"The  next  day  there  were  German  posters, 
German  punishments;  women  had  opened  the 
shutters  of  their  windows,  allowing  rays  of 
light  to  stream  out,  for  which  they  must  be 


164  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

fined.  But  the  French  people  had  had  their 
hour  of  gladness,  and  they  paid  their  fines 
without  a  murmur;  then  the  darkness,  which 
had  Hfted  for  those  blessed  moments,  closed  in 
again,  and  the  long  night  went  on. 

"That  is  one  of  the  last  recollections  of  my 
stay  there,"  said  Morton,  "and  one  of  the 
most  striking;  even  now  I  sometimes  recall  the 
old  woman  as  she  held  the  sleeping  child  for 
the  airplane  to  see,  when  it  was  only  a  spark 
of  light,  scarcely  distinguishable  among  all 
the  others.  A  few  days  afterward  we  went 
away;  the  premonitory  symptoms  of  our  entry 
into  the  war  had  begun  to  show  themselves, 
and  the  thirty  Americans  who  ran  from  one 
end  to  the  other  of  the  territory  which  held 
six  German  armies  soon  became  'undesirable.' 
Our  situation  was  peculiar.  Negotiations  had 
been  begun  by  which  the  Dutch  and  the 
Spanish  governments  were  to  take  over  our 
work  and  insure  the  importation  and  delivery 
of  supplies,  but  in  the  meantime,  and  until  we 
should  be  actual  belligerents,  we  went  on  with 
our  inspections,  always  accompanied  by  our 
German  officers,  who  were  even  more  closely 
attached  to  us  than  before.  When  I  was  in 
Morocco  I  used  to  amuse  myself  by  watching 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       165 

the  white  birds  which  dehberately  and  pa- 
tiently followed  in  the  track  of  the  laboring 
oxen  as  they  turned  up  the  furrows.  The  ox 
and  the  bird — an  odd  association  seen  all 
through  that  country;  the  birds  feed  on  the 
flies  which  swarm  around  the  beasts  and  are 
scattered  by  the  lashing  of  the  ox's  tail.  No 
white  bird  was  ever  more  faithful  to  his  chosen 
ox  than  the  German  officer  was  to  his  particu- 
lar delegate !  The  last  days  of  this  enforced 
intimacy  were  rather  trying.  After  our  endless 
discussions  about  the  war,  the  endless  German 
theories,  and  the  endless  complaints  as  to  our 
having  supplied  munitions  to  the  Allies,  our 
entry  into  the  struggle  was  dramatic,  to  say 
the  least.  The  Germans  had  never  really  be- 
lieved in  our  intervention.  They  knew  how 
deep  the  roots  of  American  life  were  struck 
into  peace  and  prosperity,  and  they  had 
counted  on  their  influence  in  the  United  States, 
on  their  propaganda,  and  on  the  inoculation 
of  Germanism  which  would  be  'biologically' 
developed  by  the  dissemination  of  ten  mil- 
lions of  Germans  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  our  country.  Even  when  our  inter- 
vention became  certain,  even  at  the  present 
time,  it  is  hard  for  them  to  admit  to  them- 


166  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

selves  that  we  are  really  going  in  for  serious 
fighting  with  artillery  and  rifles.  President 
Wilson's  action  when  he  declared  war  seemed 
to  them  as  if  a  far-away  Supreme  Being,  ab- 
sent-mindedly holding  the  scales  in  which  right 
and  wrong  are  weighed,  had  frowned  on  mor- 
tals as  a  sign  of  his  displeasure,  without  mean- 
ing to  descend  to  earth  in  order  to  follow  his 
condemnation  by  chastisement.  That  would 
all  be  settled  in  some  other  world.  Neverthe- 
less, although  they  could  not  believe  in  the 
possibility  of  improvising  American  armies,  as 
it  had  taken  them  forty  years  of  preparation 
to  get  their  own  ready,  they  knew  that  the 
United  States  had  decided  against  them,  and 
they  felt  the  weight  of  this  moral  judgment. 
They  were  quiet  up  to  the  end,  and  so  were 
we;  it  was  their  duty  and  ours  also,  but  we 
discussed  and  argued  persistently,  and  when 
the  last  evening  came,  we  drank  with  calm 
solemnity  the  health  of  him  who  should  be  the 
first  among  us  to  be  made  a  prisoner  of  war. 
"After  that  our  work  was  turned  over  to 
the  Dutch  delegates  who  were  to  take  our 
places.  The  last  time  that  I  met  with  a  French 
committee  was  in  a  village  on  the  banks  of 
the  Meuse.  Everything  went  on  just  as  it  had 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       167 

done  before;  I  am  not  even  sure  that  the 
French  knew  we  had  gone  into  the  war,  for  the 
German  newspapers  kept  the  announcement 
back  as  long  as  they  possibly  could.  The  presi- 
dent of  the  committee  declared  the  meeting 
adjourned  in  the  usual  words,  which  had  be- 
come a  sort  of  ritual,  and  when  I  went  back  to 

I   saw  our  barges  once  more   coming 

slowly  down  the  canal  in  a  long  line.  One  of 
the  features  of  our  administration  was  its  ab- 
sence of  noise  and  fuss;  those  barges,  with  their 
sealed  tarpaulins,  gliding  silently  along  the 
waterways,  keeping  their  own  secrets  and 
going  quietly  to  their  destination,  were  fitting 
symbols  of  the  system  by  means  of  which  we 
had  managed  to  sustain  life  in  the  suffering 
bodies  of  those  who  trusted  us. 

"And  so  one  day,  very  calmly,  without  any 
leave-taking,  we  passed  through  the  guarded 
lines,  like  the  doors  of  a  jail,  where  invaded 
France  begins  and  ends.  We  left  the  prisoners 
behind  us,  but  only  to  return  to  set  them  free 
by  force  of  arms.  From  the  sinister  zone  of 
action,  swarming  with  German  armies,  we 
passed  to  the  zone  of  occupation,  and  came  to 
the  barriers  of  barbed  wire,  charged  with  their 
lightnings.  It  was  evening,  and  for  the  last 


168  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

time  the  German  sentinels  examined  our  pa- 
pers by  the  hght  of  their  red  lamps. 

"We  were  in  Holland,  and  could  breathe 
the  air  of  freedom.  I  looked  again  at  the  wide, 
flat  meadows,  shining  with  moisture,  gay  with 
blossoming  clover  and  sainfoin,  and  diversified 
by  little  thickets  here  and  there.  This  little 
strip  of  land  would  have  looked  like  any  other 
in  a  free  country  except  for  the  sentry-boxes, 
painted  with  the  German  colors,  which  were 
strung  all  along  the  enclosure.  The  pair  of  sen- 
tinels, with  their  hands  at  the  visors  of  their 
helmets,  their  stiff,  automatic  gait,  their  silent 
politeness,  the  candid  indifference  of  their 
china-blue  eyes,  seemed  to  me  like  the  German 
machine  personified." 

"You  say  'machine,'"  said  Daisy,  "and 
they  say  that  they  are  *  nature ' — ^nature  which 
cannot  be  repressed,  and  which  is  impelled  by 
its  inward  vitality  to  become  a  devouring 
force." 

"They  have  a  lot  of  fables  and  myths  for- 
ever in  their  mouths,"  said  Morton;  "argu- 
ments which  would  become  the  Lernaean  hy- 
dra, paradoxes  which  are  both  cynical  and 
pagan,  and  yet  they  always  lay  claim  to  God's 
especial  favor.  I  stick  to  my  word — ^they  have 


THE  AMERICANS  IN  THE  WAR       169 

a  machine — ^I  admit  that  it  is  formidable,  but 
only  a  machine  after  all,  and  sooner  or  later  it 
will  explode  in  their  hands. 

"The  end  had  come.  We  passed  the  last 
sign-posts  .  .  .  there  were  only  our  two  selves 
in  our  carriage." 

He  rose  suddenly  and  drew  a  deep  breath, 
as  if  he  needed  all  the  air  left  in  the  room  by 
the  many  cigarettes  which  had  begun  and 
ended  their  lives  there.  "Thank  God,"  he  said, 
"the  C.  R.  B.  still  carries  on  its  work — ^but 
we  are  no  longer  neutrals !" 


CHAPTER  III 

WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  IN  THE  LIBERATED 
COUNTRY 


Ti 


HE  Germans  have  fallen  back.  Now  we 
shall  be  able  to  see  with  our  own  eyes  the 
country  which  they  overran.  The  footprints  of 
the  Beast  are  still  fresh;  we  shall  look  into  his 
dens,  and  smell  his  evil  stench.  We  shall  find 
stains  of  the  blood  shed  by  him,  and  witness 
the  destruction  he  has  wrought.  It  will  be  an 
intimate  satisfaction  to  our  souls  to  be  able 
to  hate  and  curse  him  more  even  than  before; 
it  makes  us  happy  now  to  be  able  to  hate,  as 
happy  as  we  once  were  in  being  able  to  love. 
We  were  again  with  our  American  friends, 
for  they  wished  to  see,  or  rather  to  revisit,  the 
regions  in  which  their  work  had  lain,  and  with 
which  they  were  once  so  familiar.  Morton  and 
Rivards  were  with  me  in  the  automobile,  and 
we  were  going  first  to  Noyon.  We  reached  Sen- 
lis  at  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and  an- 
other motor-car,  coming  from  Paris,  stopped 
near  ours.  Two  men  got  out  of  it;  I  saw  Chev- 
rillon  first,  as  he  came  toward  me  with  a  tall, 

170 


WITH   OUR  FRIENDS  171 

man,  who,  although  young,  looked  terribly 
grave.  Under  his  thick  hair  his  brow  was 
almost  stern;  his  eyes  were  keen,  his  lips  un- 
smiling— and,  I  repeat,  he  looked  terribly 
grave.  I  had  never  seen  him  before,  but  I  knew 
him  at  once  by  his  photographs;  the  thin- 
lipped,  obstinate  mouth,  the  expression  of  reti- 
cence and  silent  strength  were  eloquent  of  his 
ancestry.  It  could  only  be  Hoover,  the  grand- 
son of  Quakers. 

We  shook  hands  without  the  usual  civil 
effusion;  I  had  not  even  time  to  get  out  the 
customary  phrase  of  French  politeness:  "Mr. 
Hoover,  we  have  heard  a  great  deal  about 
you  in  France."  We  felt  that  even  those  few 
words  would  have  been  too  many,  and  were 
quick  to  take  our  tone  from  him.  Notwith- 
standing his  taciturnity  his  manner  was  ex- 
ceedingly courteous;  his  eyes  spoke  for  him, 
and  we  understood  their  language.  We  were 
at  once  conscious  of  the  tie  that  bound  us  to 
him  for  what  he  had  done  in  the  past,  and  felt 
that  it  would  make  us  one  with  him  and  his 
workers  in  the  present  and  for  the  future. 

Hoover  was  only  in  France  for  three  days, 
on  his  way  to  the  United  States  to  assume 
control  of  the  food  supply;  in  the  meantime 


172  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

he  meant,  like  us,  to  see  some  of  the  French 
towns  and  villages  which  had  been  set  free 
by  the  German  retreat. 

Our  observations  began  at  Senlis,  where  the 
traces  of  invasion,  although  not  recent,  were 
still  plainly  to  be  seen.  The  Germans  held  the 
town  for  ten  days  in  September,  1914,  and 
here  began  the  ruins  which  were  to  mark 
their  passage  everywhere.  I  watched  Mr. 
Hoover  as  he  went  quickly  through  what  was 
once  the  rue  de  la  Republique;  we  counted  as 
many  as  one  hundred  and  seventeen  houses 
which  had  been  burned  down  as  a  "punitive 
measure"  on  the  3d  and  4th  of  that  September. 
Hoover,  as  usual,  said  nothing.  He  had  already 
seen  many  ruined  cities;  he  knew  Louvain, 
Malines,  and  Aerschot,  and  had  witnessed 
the  result  of  "punitive  measures"  throughout 
invaded  France.  For  him  and  his  companions 
Senlis  was  the  end  of  a  Via  Dolorosa  which 
had  its  beginning  at  Vise. 

We  were  able  to  count  the  one  hundred 
and  seventeen  houses  because  their  walls  were 
still  standing,  but  their  only  roof  was  the  sky, 
and  scraps  of  its  blue  were  framed  by  their 
empty  windows.  The  street  looked  as  if  it  were 
dead  and  had  been  buried  deep  in  the  earth 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  173 

for  hundreds  of  quiet  years,  only  to  have  its 
skeleton  given  back  at  last  to  the  light  of  day. 

The  look  of  intelligent  pity  in  Hoover's  face 
was  like  that  of  a  physician  who  sees  in  a 
corpse  the  signs  of  a  plague  whose  ravages  he 
has  studied  elsewhere.  The  German  troops 
came  in  by  the  northern  end  of  the  rue  de  la 
Republique;  they  were  drunk  with  vainglory, 
shouting  hymns,  thanking  the  Old  God  who 
was  giving  them  the  victory,  even  rolling  over 
each  other  like  mad  dervishes  as  they  cried 
"Nach  Paris!'' 

The  men  and  women  of  Senlis  well  remem- 
ber those  shouts;  the  German  hordes  saw 
Paris  in  a  sort  of  ecstasy,  as  the  dervishes  see 
paradise;  they  had  almost  reached  their  goal; 
a  few  hours  more  and  their  grip  would  be  on 
the  heart  of  France. 

And  here  we  can  begin  to  study  their  "pu- 
nitive measures."  A  German  officer  asked  the 
mayor  of  Senlis,  Monsieur  Odent,  whether  all 
the  French  troops  had  withdrawn  from  the 
town,  and  he,  in  perfectly  good  faith,  knowing 
that  his  life  hung  on  the  truth  of  his  word, 
answered  that  they  were  all  gone.  He  could 
not  see  that  a  rear-guard  of  French  and  Sene- 
galese infantry  was  still  at  the  southern  end 


174  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

of  the  street,  retreating  toward  Paris.  These 
men  saw  the  first  German  soldiers  coming  in 
and  fired  at  them.  Then  the  flood-gates  of  Ger- 
man wrath  were  opened.  All  day  long  the 
town  was  heavily  shelled,  as  the  German  offi- 
cers insisted  that  it  was  the  civil  population, 
"the  cifilians,"  as  they  pronounced  it,  who 
had  fired;  eye-witnesses  have  still  a  lively  rec- 
ollection of  a  corpulent  German  major  stand- 
ing upright  in  his  stirrups  and  swearing  at 
them  until  he  was  purple  in  the  face. 

The  "cifilians"  had  fired,  and  almost  as  if 
by  reflex  action  the  major  suddenly  drew  his 
pistol  and  blew  out  the  brains  of  an  old 
"cifilian^'  who  was  standing  patiently  and 
quietly  outside  the  door  of  a  hospital.  The 
officer  gave  a  hoarse  cry  like  that  of  a  wild 
beast  when  he  saw  him  fall,  and  on  the  instant 
his  soldiers  fired  a  volley  through  the  hospital 
windows  into  the  ward  where  the  French  nuns 
were  tending  their  wounded.  That  was  the 
first  prompt  ''punitive  measure."  Soon  after- 
ward cyclists  rolled  along  the  rue  de  la  Repub- 
lique  in  orderly  line,  bearing  tins  of  petrol 
and  compressed  tablets  of  naphtha,  and  set 
fire  to  every  house.  From  one  after  another 
thick  black  smoke  arose,  followed  by  fierce 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  175 

flames;  all  night  long  they  mounted  into  the 
still  September  air,  blotting  out  the  full  moon 
and  the  quiet  stars. 

That  is  how  an  old  street  in  an  old  French 
town  became  a  skeleton  of  stone.  Let  us  exam- 
ine this  "punitive  measure"  calmly  and  coolly 
— ^let  us  try  to  see  how  and  why  it  all  hap- 
pened, for  we  shaU  surely  come  across  the 
same  system  again  and  again;  it  is  simple — 
the  mere  alphabet  of  a  method;  through  it  we 
shall  learn  to  love  the  Creator  who  made  the 
world  and  to  hate  the  German  who  has  done 
his  best  to  destroy  it. 

But  the  job  at  Senlis  was  not  quite  finished; 
Monsieur  Odent,  who  had  staked  his  life  when 
he  said  the  French  had  left  the  town,  had  lost 
and  was  not  yet  dead.  The  forfeit  had  to  be 
paid.  He  was  able  to  send  his  wife  and  chil- 
dren to  a  place  of  safety,  and  he  did  not  be- 
tray any  emotion  as  he  and  six  other  hostages 
were  led  away  by  a  file  of  German  soldiers,  to 
be  judged  under  a  cluster  of  oak-trees  on  the 
edge  of  a  wood,  near  the  village  of  Saint  Cla- 
mant. A  cluster  of  oaks  for  a  judgment-seat, 
like  that  of  Saint  Louis !  The  mayor  was 
obliged  to  listen  to  his  death-sentence,  which 
was  long;  then  he  turned  toward  his  friends, 


176  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

the  other  hostages,  saying  to  one  of  them: 
"Good-by,  my  poor  Benoit;  we  shall  not 
meet  again  in  this  world,  for  I  am  to  be  shot." 
He  took  out  his  crucifix  and  his  pocketbook, 
asked  that  his  watch  might  be  given  to  his 
wife,  clasped  the  trembling  outstretched  hands 
of  his  friends,  and  turned  toward  the  judges 
who  awaited  him  under  the  cluster  of  oaks. 
Two  soldiers  shot  him  from  a  distance  of  ten 
paces,  thus  carrying  on  a  tragic  and  glorious 
family  tradition,  for  his  father,  also  mayor  of 
Senlis,  had  been  shot  by  the  Prussians  in  1870. 

This  story  was  told  to  us  and  to  our  Ameri- 
can companions  by  one  of  the  six  hostages 
who  were  there  on  that  day.  He  added :  "While 
our  friend's  body  was  being  thrown  into  a 
shallow  grave  before  our  eyes,  we  could  see 
the  light  of  incendiary  fires  spreading  over 
the  night  sky." 

An  old  cure  met  us  in  the  cathedral,  and  he 
also  had  a  story  to  tell.  A  German  officer  had 
held  a  pistol  to  his  head,  and  shouted  that 
he  must  have  the  key  of  the  belfry,  as  there 
were  mitrailleuses  on  the  platform  of  the 
tower.  The  priest  gave  up  the  key  and  led  the 
German  to  the  top  of  the  belfry,  where  they 
found  only  the  bells,  that  during  hundreds  of 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  177 

years  had  rung  for  the  birth,  the  prayers,  the 
love,  and  the  death  of  sons  and  daughters  of 
France. 

A  week  later  an  armored  car  came  down  the 
road  from  Paris  at  full  speed.  Monsieur  Odent 
was  not  there  to  hear  "The  German  troops 
are  falling  back!"  but  his  body  must  have 
thrilled  with  joy  under  its  thin  covering  of 
French  earth.  Scattered  shots  still  rang  out 
from  the  square,  but  as  the  car  sped  back  the 
men  in  it  stood  up,  crying  out:  "Keep  your 
courage  up — ^we're  coming  back !" 

It  is  an  old  story  now,  as  war-stories  go, 
and  a  simple  one.  Senlis  and  Chantilly  mark 
the  extreme  edge  of  the  German  invasion. 
Now  German  prisoners  are  at  work  in  the 
fields,  getting  in  the  first  crop  of  hay  under 
the  May  sunshine;  the  invasion  is  checked, 
the  hymns  of  triumph  are  heard  no  more, 
and  the  cry  "Nach  Paris  !'*  sticks  in  the 
throat  of  the  German  armies. 

From  Senlis  we  went  rapidly  to  CompiSgne, 
and  our  way  this  morning  lay  through  the 
forest  of  Ourscamp.  Lilies-of-the-valley,  stand- 
ing straight  between  their  blade-like  leaves, 
made  all  the  air  sweet  with  their  fragrance, 
and  above  their  white  beauty  the  great  trees. 


178  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

beeches,  oaks,  and  birches,  stretched  out  their 
branches  glossy  with  their  new  leafage,  pro- 
tecting the  mysteries  of  many  nests.  Suddenly, 
in  the  heart  of  the  forest,  we  came  upon  a  sort 
of  frontier — ^the  line  of  trenches  which  shel- 
tered the  Germans  for  two  years,  and  where 
Fate,  thought  by  them  to  be  their  servant, 
began  to  turn  against  them. 

We  went  down  into  their  dugouts,  empty 
ant-hills  with  a  labyrinth  of  passages  cut  deep 
in  the  earth,  all  leading  to  the  hiding-place  of 
the  murderous  master-spirit,  the  German 
officer  who  worked,  ate,  drank,  and  slept,  bur- 
rowed deep  under  our  beech-trees.  Above 
the  door  of  his  sheltered  bedroom  some  one 
had  drawn  a  clock,  and  under  the  figures  on 
its  face  these  words  were  carefully  written : 

'*Im  Gleichmas  die  Stunde  in  scharfen 
Wacht  bis  in  Frauen  Armen  uns  in  Friede 
lacht."  ("During  our  keen  vigil  one  hour  is 
like  another,  until  Peace  shall  smile  at  us  in 
women's  arms.") 

"While  the  world  was  at  peace  they  only 
thought  of  war,"  remarked  Hoover,  "and 
during  the  war  they  dreamt  of  peace." 

So  this  is  the  fatal  border-line  behind  which 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  179 

France  suffered  and  waited.  It  is  a  mere  line, 
not  wider  than  a  ditch  or  the  bed  of  a  brook; 
workmen  were  busy  getting  material  out  of  it, 
and  rolling  the  strands  of  barbed  wire  into 
great  balls. 

We  went  fast,  for  we  were  expected  at 
Noyon — or,  rather,  to  be  accurate,  Mr.  Hoover 
and  his  companions  were  expected  there,  as 
they  had  just  left  one  side  of  the  invaded  dis- 
tricts to  see  what  war  had  done  on  the  other 
border.  We  had  only  time  for  a  glimpse  of  the 
ruined  villages  of  Carlepont  and  Cuts,  but 
what  struck  us  most,  as  at  Senlis,  was  the  gap- 
ing emptiness  of  the  windows,  the  unscreened 
daylight  streaming  in  where  our  eyes  had  been 
accustomed  to  see  the  soft  shadow  behind 
which  lives  had  a  right  to  privacy.  Now  noth- 
ing was  hidden  nor  was  there  any  life  to  hide; 
weeds  were  already  growing  in  the  gaping 
holes  of  the  ruined  walls,  and  we  could  see  the 
gleaming  eyeballs  of  famished  cats  as  they 
prowled  about  in  the  piles  of  rubbish.  It  was 
still  possible  to  distinguish  the  way  in  which 
the  little  villages  had  been  laid  out,  and  where 
the  streets  had  crossed,  but  the  houses  with 
their  blank  squares,  and  light  streaming  in 
where  there  was  no  longer  any  life,  made  us 


180  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

think  of  dead  bodies  whose  staring  eyes  have 
not  been  closed  by  pious  hands.  In  these  ruins 
there  was  neither  peace  nor  forgetfulness. 

Although  Noyon  had  only  been  liberated 
for  a  few  days,  everything  was  quiet,  and  the 
work  of  reparation  went  on  busily.  Some  of  our 
soldiers  were  loading  trucks  with  beams,  while 
others  were  using  them  to  run  up  a  makeshift 
bridge  across  the  Oise.  As  we  passed  a  camp 
of  negro  troops  we  heard  their  guttural  African 
songs,  with  a  very  rudimentary  accompani- 
ment on  the  guitar;  the  men  smiled  as  we  ran 
by,  and  we  saw  the  light  flash  on  their  white 
teeth.  The  old  church  in  the  square,  its 
arches  a  little  sunken  with  the  weight  of  cen- 
turies, was  happily  uninjured;  it  still  sheltered 
the  figures  of  apostles  and  saints,  and  seemed 
to  shed  the  blessing  of  ancient  France  on  the 
national  life  beginning  anew  in  its  shadow. 

I  could  not  help  saying  to  my  travelling 
companion,  "You  are  in  one  of  the  old  centres 
of  French  history,"  but  our  friends  from  the 
New  World  did  not  need  to  be  told,  and  were 
often  more  sensitive  than  we  ourselves  to  the 
subtle  influences  of  our  past.  They  felt  the  liv- 
ing poetry  of  old  France  as  we  should  feel  if, 
instead  of  finding  only  tombs  and  empty  tem- 
ples on  classic  ground,  we  were  allowed  to 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  181 

know  the  life,  the  thoughts,  and  the  manners 
of  the  beings  who  once  inhabited  those  won- 
derful lands.  Our  American  friends  used  even 
to  say  to  me: 

"Why  do  you  draw  such  a  marked  and  al- 
most hostile  line  between  the  present  and  the 
past?  You  say  'the  past'  sometimes  as  if  it 
were  not  a  part  of  the  present.  When  we  look 
back  across  the  ages  France  to  us  always  *is'; 
in  the  world's  history  it  is  the  Word." 

"France  *is.'"  Those  words,  spoken  by  a 
foreigner,  touched  me  deeply,  for  it  is  true  that 
there  are  traces  of  our  past  through  the  hours 
of  our  daily  life,  as  there  have  been  through 
the  long  hours  of  war.  Noyon  !  It  was  here  that 
Charles,  not  yet  Charlemagne,  was  crowned 
while  still  only  planning  his  great  empire;  it 
was  here  that  Hugues  was  proclaimed  rex 
francorum;  near  here  Clovis  the  Frank  con- 
quered Alaric  the  Visigoth,  and  just  now,  as 
we  passed  Compiegne,  we  might  have  seen 
traces  of  the  ditch  where  Jeanne  d'Arc  stum- 
bled and  was  taken  prisoner.  All  the  past  is 
indeed  present  in  our  lives  to-day;  the  mighti- 
est river  that  sweeps  along  is,  like  the  hum- 
blest brook,  made  up  of  all  the  water  that  has 
been  poured  into  it. 

We  were  glad,  after  a  solemn  fashion,  to 


182  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

take  possession  again  of  the  old  streets  of 
Noyon,  to  hear  the  footfalls  of  our  young  offi- 
cers as  they  went  about  the  business  of  instal- 
lation, and,  above  all,  to  be  able  to  bring  there 
a  little  group  of  the  Americans  who  had  seen 
the  invasion  and  whose  hands  had  dealt  out 
the  food  that  kept  our  people  alive.  We  were 
also  excited  at  the  thought  that  we  had  taken 
a  step,  even  if  only  one,  into  the  invaded  ter- 
ritory, and  we  knew  that  there  was  still  a 
superhuman  task  to  be  done  before  the  coun- 
try could  really  live  again. 

An  officer  showed  us  the  way  to  the  sub- 
prefecture,  where  Major  B.  was  waiting  for 
us.  Mr.  Hoover  went  in  before  us,  and  I  was 
able  for  the  first  time  to  see  the  singularly 
sweet  expression  of  which  his  stern  and  obsti- 
nate face  is  capable.  Major  B.  said  a  few 
words  to  him  in  a  low  voice;  I  saw  Hoover 
stop  suddenly  and  almost  recoil,  as  if  he  were 
surprised  by  an  emotion  to  be  mastered  before 
he  went  any  further.  He  had  taken  off  his  hat, 
and  his  smooth,  thick  hair  made  a  close  frame 
for  his  stubborn  and  intelligent  head. 

He  went  forward  quickly  into  the  open 
room,  where  a  large  and  uncommon  group  of 
men  was  waiting  for  us,  or,  rather,  for  him. 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  183 

They  were  all  civilians,  for  the  most  part  old 
peasants  of  our  countryside,  and  as  the  oldest 
came  toward  him  holding  out  both  hands  as 
if  bearing  a  message  from  all  the  rest,  Hoover 
understood  very  well  what  it  meant;  his  lips 
quivered  slightly,  and  even  he,  the  president 
of  imperturbables,  could  hardly  keep  back 
the  tears  which  sprang  to  his  eyes. 

These  old  civilians — ^for  there  were  no  young 
men  in  the  invaded  country — ^were  not  stran- 
gers to  Rivards  and  Morton,  who  had  lived 
either  with  these  same  men  or  with  others 
just  like  them.  They  were  the  mayors  of  the 
ninety  liberated  villages,  and  when  they  had 
heard,  the  day  before,  that  Hoover  was  com- 
ing, they  had  all  started  to  meet  him,  some  on 
foot  and  some  in  country  carts;  although  the 
roads  were  still  almost  impassable,  they  had 
somehow  managed  to  come.  Now  that  these 
old  Frenchmen  were  once  more  free,  it  was 
the  wish  of  their  hearts  to  thank  the  chair- 
man of  the  C.  R.  B. 

And  they  knew  how  to  do  it.  We  had  heard 
the  stories  of  Harder,  of  Morton,  and  of  Mrs. 
Vernon,  but  had  we  really  seen  ?  Had  we  any 
idea  what  the  collaboration  of  these  Americans 
had  really  meant,  voluntarily  imprisoned  as 


184 


they  were  with  our  people,  working  with  them 
for  months  and  years  to  receive  and  distribute 
that  humble  thing — daily  bread  ? 

These  men  who  came  from  the  liberated  vil- 
lages knew  and  remembered;  gratitude,  affec- 
tion, and  confidence  shone  in  their  eyes;  they 
were  like  wounded  men  who,  once  well  again, 
hold  out  grateful  hands  to  those  who  have 
carried  them  to  safety,  healed  their  wounds, 
and  tended  them  back  to  health.  One  after 
another  Hoover,  Morton,  and  Rivards  shook 
the  hands  (some  of  them  very  old  and  gnarled) 
of  the  mayors  and  their  deputies,  and  for  us, 
who  had  not  witnessed  the  gradual  formation 
of  a  strong  tie,  it  was  very  interesting  to  see 
this  cordiality  and,  so  to  speak,  "family  feel- 
ing" between  strangers  and  the  old-fashioned 
country  people  of  our  old  land. 

"Now  confess,"  said  Morton  to  one  of  them, 
laughing,  "that  when  you  first  heard  that  'the 
Americans'  were  coming  you  expected  to  see 
us  wearing  beads  around  our  necks  and 
feathers  on  our  heads." 

"Oh,"  answered  the  old  man,  "it  was  the 
women  who  did  not  know  any  better." 

At  last  the  time  had  come  when  every  one 
might  relax,  and  they  began  to  exchange  recol- 


WITH  OUR  FRJ^DS  185 

lections  as  to  rice,  bacon,  peas,  beans,  and  the 
little  bills  of  the  paper  currency.  One  of  the 
Frenchmen  summed  it  all  up  by  saying: 

"The  American  bread  was  as  if  it  had  been 
French,"  and  another  added:  "And  if  we 
hadn't  had  it  there  would  have  been  nothing 
of  us  left  but  our  bones;  the  Americans  were 
like  Providence,  which  doesn't  desert  the 
house  of  misfortune." 

"  But  France  gave  the  money  for  the  bread," 
said  Morton. 

"I  know,"  said  the  old  man;  "but  without 
you  the  money  would  not  have  turned  into 
bread." 

They  were  all  familiar  with  the  complicated 
organization  of  the  food  supply,  and  the  old 
Frenchmen  and  young  Americans  talked  about 
business  matters,  and  told  stories  which  both 
sides  understood  without  any  explanation,  as 
people  do  who  belong  to  the  same  family.  It 
would  not  have  taken  much  to  make  us  new- 
comers in  the  liberated  regions  feel  like  out- 
siders, French  though  we  were.  They  spoke  of 
their  last  accounts,  of  what  had  happened  to 
the  last  sacks  of  flour  and  the  last  tins  of  food. 
"Above  all,  be  careful  not  to  let  the  Germans 
get  any  tin — ^not  so  much  as  the  lid  of  a  sar- 


186  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

dine-box/'  was  the  order.  It  was  understood, 
and  every  precaution  taken,  up  to  the  last 
minute.  *'They  wouldn't  have  found  that!'* 
was  followed  by  the  familiar  gesture  of  the 
thumb-nail  against  the  teeth. 

Then  their  thoughts  went  to  those  who  were 
absent.  If  the  mayors  were  almost  all  old  and 
"near  the  earth,"  as  we  say,  it  is  because  when 
the  Germans  were  obliged  to  fall  back  they 
took  with  them  their  prey  from  many  villages, 
in  the  shape  of  the  younger  men  and  those  of 
most  importance,  whose  chateaux  or  factories 
were  in  the  neighborhood.  The  mayors  of  Fol- 
embray  and  Candor  had  been  carried  off  as 
hostages;  the  day  of  deliverance  had  dawned, 
but  they  had  been  swept  off  by  German  offi- 
cers in  the  retreat.  The  mayor  of  Ognolles, 
who  had  been  taken  as  a  hostage  in  1914,  had 
been  repatriated,  after  two  years — and  he  told 
us  what  the  German  prison-camps  were  like. 

We  lunched  quickly,  as  is  fitting  in  time  of 
war,  and  just  as  we  were  about  to  leave,  the 
oldest  of  the  Frenchmen  rose  to  his  feet,  his 
sunburnt  hand  holding  a  glassful  of  the  gen- 
erous red  wine  of  France.  His  bushy  eyebrows 
stood  out  like  white  thickets  over  his  eyes, 
which,  although  faded  with  age,  were  still 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  187 

bright — ^the  eyes  of  one  who  sees  more  than 
he  dreams;  his  broad  face  bore  the  mark  of 
privations,  and  Hfe  had  wrinkled  it  with  deep 
furrows,  like  those  of  his  own  fields,  for  the 
peasant  grows  to  resemble  the  land  he  loves. 
His  thin  lips  were  parted  in  a  smile  which  had 
once  been  merry,  and  as  he  stood  up  we  saw 
that  he  stooped  a  little  and  that  his  thin 
shoulders  drooped  under  the  folds  of  a  velvet- 
een coat  which  had  evidently  been  made  for 
a  larger  frame.  He  looked  Hoover  straight  in 
the  eyes  and  thanked  him  in  the  name  of  all 
the  others  and  in  the  name  of  the  liberated 
villages.  His  words  were  few,  for  when  one  has 
suffered  much,  one  loses  the  power  of  speech, 
and  the  golden  tongue  of  France  is  not  yet 
unloosed.  The  sinews  of  his  thin  neck  swelled 
with  emotion  as  the  old  man  recalled  the  long 
days  of  trial,  and  gave  the  names  of  some  who 
should  have  been  there  .  .  .  but  had  been  laid 
low  by  German  bullets.  Then  with  the  same 
gesture  that  Mrs.  Vernon  had  made  the  other 
evening,  he  took  up  a  morsel  of  bread  rever- 
ently in  his  fingers,  as  if  it  had  been  blessed, 
and  said  in  a  voice  that  broke  a  little : 

"This  is  the  bread  of  France,  and  thanks 
to  you  American  gentlemen  our  sweat  has 


188  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

never  moistened  the  bread  of  slavery;  we  and 
our  wives  and  our  children  have  eaten  the 
bread  of  France." 

Hoover  answered  him  very  briefly;  it  was  a 
fine  sight  to  see  the  peasant  from  the  Ile-de- 
France  and  the  great  citizen  of  the  United 
States  speaking  to  each  other,  almost  with 
religious  solemnity,  each  looking  full  in  the 
other's  face,  as  one  equal  looks  at  another. 

"We  have  left  invaded  France,  because  we 
are  coming  to  fight  for  the  France  that  is 
free,"  was  the  substance  of  what  Hoover  said. 
The  time  is  past  when  America  gave  only 
her  wheat;  now  American  hearts,  American 
wills,  and  American  lives  are  offering  them- 
selves and  coming  to  us  in  their  legions. 

Hoover,  as  he  spoke  to  this  son  of  our  soil, 
seemed  to  be  pledging  America  to  the  relief  of 
our  invaded  and  tortured  country,  and  we  all 
rose  instinctively,  as  men  did  in  the  old  days 
when  they  broke  Easter  bread  together. 

We  thought  of  all  the  prodigious  work 
undertaken  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
While  we  stood  here  on  the  border  of  the 
region  just  set  free  from  invasion,  over  there 
young  men  who  have  never  trodden  the  soil 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  189 

French  meadows,  were  crowding  into  the  re- 
cruiting offices,  signing  their  names  in  regis- 
ters, binding  themselves  to  us  for  Hfe  and 
death.  I  remembered  our  doubts  only  a  few 
weeks  ago,  when  we  said:  "Is  it  possible  that 
an  army  can  spring  in  a  day,  like  helmeted 
Minerva,  from  the  brain  of  Wilson  ?" 

The  impossible  had  come  to  pass,  the  great 
crusade  had  begun,  and  from  one  side  of  the 
Atlantic  to  the  other  messages  were  flying  to 
and  fro  like  passionate  outbreathings — ^mes- 
sages of  hope,  of  battle,  of  life,  and  of  death. 

Hoover  left  us  in  a  hurry,  to  run  through 
the  liberated  villages  which  he  wished  to  see. 
We  went  after  him  to  the  same  villages,  which 
are  indeed  liberated,  but  only  as  prisoners  are 
whom  the  enemy  has  mutilated  before  he  was 
forced  to  give  them  up. 


Love,  pity,  reparation — ^those  are  the  words 
which  spring  from  the  depths  of  the  heart 
after  seeing  what  we  have  seen. 

* 

How  shall  I  write  ?  What  I  shall  say  will  be 


190  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

like  words  spoken  at  the  tombs  of  the  beloved 
dead — it  will  be  hard  to  stop. 

* 

Let  us  smell  the  almost  imperceptible  fra- 
grance of  a  branch  of  green  leaves,  or  the  per- 
fume of  this  bunch  from  the  lilac-bushes  which 
grow  triumphantly  beside  the  ruins;  let  us 
look  at  the  trees  cut  off  near  the  ground,  los- 
ing the  life-blood  of  their  sap,  and  lying  like 
dead  things  along  the  roads.  Nature  rejoices, 
birds  are  singing,  and  larks  shower  down  from 
the  sky  their  tribute  to  the  joy  of  living. 

But  the  earth  mourns;  the  delicate  grace  of 
the  flowers  which  bloom  among  the  desolation 
moves  us  like  the  innocent  smile  of  a  baby 
found  alone  by  the  cold  hearth  of  a  house 
where  his  father  and  mother  have  been  put 
to  death  or  torn  away. 

This  bunch  of  flowers  was  picked  at  Mar- 
gnles,  as  we  and  our  friends  followed  the  road 
from  Noyon.  They  knew  it  better  than  we,  and 
Morton  drove  the  car.  It  was  four  o'clock  in 
the  afternoon,  and  as  soon  as  we  left  Noyon 
we  began  to  pass  the  first  rows  of  trees  cut 
down  beside  the  roads.   When  we  reached 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  191 

Margnies-les-Cerises  (such  a  pretty  name !) 
we  thought  we  had  come  into  a  place  given 
over  to  death.  The  tiny  houses,  all  crumbled 
into  little  bits,  made  us  think  of  a  city  of  ants 
on  which  some  powerful  and  ill-natured  beast 
had  set  his  crushing  foot. 

We  had  sounded  our  horn  from  time  to 
time  in  the  dead  silence  of  the  countryside, 
and  as  we  did  so  again  in  the  village  two  old 
men  came  out  of  a  deep  hole  in  the  earth  be- 
side the  church,  close  to  the  graveyard.  They 
looked  at  us  quietly,  with  faces  used  to  adver- 
sity; mildly  astonished  to  hear  and  see  us, 
they  seemed  to  be  inquiring  what  we  wanted, 
as  they  might  have  done  when  the  village  was 
prosperous,  and  tourists  came  there  to  buy 
cherries,  on  the  strength  of  its  name. 

They  saw  our  eyes  fixed  on  a  sort  of  gibbet 
which  reared  itself,  like  another  deity,  in  front 
of  the  church;  it  was  made  of  two  smooth 
newly  felled  tree-trunks,  with  the  bark  taken 
off,  connected  by  a  stout  truss  reinforced  by 
iron  bands. 

A  third  huge  trunk  hung  loosely  by  a  chain 
from  this  truss,  so  that  when  pushed  it  would 
deliver  a  shattering  blow  to  the  frail  walls  of 
the  village  houses. 


192  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

"That  was  their  battering-ram,"  said  one 
of  the  two  ghosts.  Yes,  they  had  revived  the 
battering-ram  of  antiquity;  it  did  not  tap  at 
doors  furtively  and  discreetly,  like  death,  but 
struck  with  heavy  and  repeated  blows,  goring 
our  houses  like  a  mighty  bull.  A  sinister  and 
silent  job !  There  were  no  flames  to  show 
against  the  night  sky,  no  twisting  smoke  to 
rise  in  daytime,  and  the  dull  sound  of  the 
blows  was  lost  before  it  reached  our  lines.  It 
was  as  if  living  bodies  had  been  kicked  to 
death;  the  houses  fell  in  little  bits  which  were 
scattered  over  the  ground. 

The  two  old  men  told  us  their  names — ^I  can 
only  remember  that  their  Christian  names 
were  Eustache  and  Julien.  It  appeared  that 
they  were  not  alone;  from  other  holes  other 
ghosts  suddenly  came  to  life;  some  even 
showed  their  heads,  like  spectres,  through  the 
opening  of  a  shattered  tombstone,  for  the 
Germans  had  disturbed  the  k:^  sleep  of  the 
dead  by  breaking  open  their  graves  in  order 
to  take  shelter  in  them  as  though  they  had 
been  ditches. 

The  spectres  came  up  to  us,  all  of  them  old, 
with  incredibly  dilapidated  clothes.  They  were 
looking  in  these  *Mitches,"  they  explained,  for 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  193 

what  had  been  left  there;  odds  and  ends  of 
furniture  taken  from  the  village,  mattresses, 
bedding;  stuff  with  which  the  German  crows 
had  made  their  nests  in  our  graves.  With  these 
remnants  our  old  people  meant  to  make  them- 
selves beds,  in  some  corner  less  funereal  and 
less  profaned. 

The  churchyard  wall  was  furrowed  and 
pierced  by  shell-fire;  we  sat  down  on  part  of 
it,  and  Eustache  and  Julien  stood  before  us, 
smoking  their  pipes  with  an  air  of  satisfaction. 
The  soldiers,  they  said,  had  given  them  to- 
bacco. 

Their  hollow  faces  showed  the  hardships 
they  had  undergone,  but  their  eyes  were  clear 
and  steady,  and  the  light  of  a  smile  came  into 
them  as  our  American  friends  held  out  their 
hands.  As  Morton  well  knew,  a  French  peas- 
ant rarely  smiles  suddenly  and  amiably  at  a 
foreigner;  one  would  have  said  here,  as  at 
Noyon,  that  it  was  a  meeting  of  old  friends. 
Those  two  years  and  a  half  were  equal  to  a 
lifetime  of  suffering  spent  together. 

"The  American  gentlemen  will  find  changes 
here,"  said  Eustache  laconically,  spitting  ener- 
getically on  one  side,  and  shaking  his  old  head 
in  the  direction  of  the  battering-ram. 


194  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

Those  few  words  were  enough.  We  stared 
together  at  the  creature,  a  daughter  of  Ash- 
taroth,  a  diaboHcal  invention,  the  ram;  and 
we  understood  it  all;  the  ram  had  battered  at 
all  the  doors;  as  the  Germans  could  not  take 
the  little  French  village  as  a  hostage,  they  had 
murdered  it. 

The  pipes  were  finished,  and  the  last  whiffs 
of  their  smoke  exhaled,  almost  in  silence;  a 
few  laborers,  scattered  here  and  there  in  what 
they  still  called  the  fields,  came  to  join  us. 
There  were  twenty-three  of  them,  all  old  in- 
habitants of  Margnies,  still  sheltering  them- 
selves underground  at  night,  and  in  daytime 
trying  to  recover  their  belongings  from  the 
ditches,  or  occupied  outside  the  village  in  try- 
ing to  cultivate  their  little  market-gardens. 

This  is  what  old  Eustache  told  us  of  the 
last  days  of  the  village,  a  few  words  at  a  time, 
and  shaking  his  pipe  more  often  than  I  could 
count. 

"On  the  6th  of  February,  two  months  ago, 
we  had  not  known  for  two  years  about  any- 
thing that  was  going  on  outside  our  village. 
Every  morning  the  Germans  used  to  stick 
their  orders  up  at  the  Kommandatur"  (the 
German  word   sounded  oddly  in   a   French 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  195 

mouth).  "That  morning  they  warned  us  that 
at  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  they  would 
take  away  the  'able-bodied  men'  still  left 
among  us;  there  were  not  many,  for  we  had 
already  seen  deportations;  there  were  just 
half  a  dozen,  and  their  names  were  posted  up. 

*'At  four  o'clock  the  six  men  went  off  be- 
tween ten  soldiers,  carrying  their  clothes  in  a 
bundle  on  their  backs;  they  were  much  upset 
because  they  could  not  get  any  decent  shoes, 
and  we  did  not  know  where  they  were  going; 
they  went  off  toward  the  north,  on  the  road 
which  goes  uphill  behind  the  church. 

"The  next  day  there  was  another  notice  on 
the  door  of  the  Kommandatur. 

"This  time  it  was  an  order  to  all  the  women 
of  Margnies  between  the  ages  of  seventeen 
and  sixty  years,  who  had  not  children  under 
fifteen,  to  be  at  the  open  doors  of  their  houses 
at  four  o'clock  that  day,  also  ready  to  go 
away. 

"They  were  ordered  to  take  with  them  a 
parcel  with  a  change  of  shoes  and  a  blanket — 
no  other  baggage. 

"It  was  the  first  time  that  any  of  our 
women  had  been  deported,  and  as  we  did  not 
know  what  had  been  going  on  anywhere  else. 


196  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

it  was  a  blow.  In  a  farming  country  like  this, 
where  every  one  works  in  the  fields,  the 
women's  help  had  been  needed.  In  winter  they 
were  employed  to  break  the  ice  which  was 
put  in  the  cellars,  in  spring  to  nip  the  extra 
buds  off  the  fruit-trees,  and  in  summer  to  pick 
the  cherries  and  help  with  the  harvest. 

"We  were  always  working  under  orders, 
and  not  for  ourselves,  but  in  a  certain  way  we 
got  the  good  of  our  work,  because  the  Ameri- 
can gentlemen  had  made  arrangements  so  that 
we  had  our  potatoes,  and  we  were  paid  for 
our  crops  in  bread. 

"So  it  was  the  first  time  women  were  taken 
away  from  us;  that  was  kept  for  the  last  day. 
Nothing  was  to  be  left  behind  but  old  crea- 
tures like  us,  and  rubbish.  We  did  not  know 
that  it  was  the  last  day  of  the  occupation. 

"Look  there,"  said  the  old  man,  and  he 
pointed  to  the  other  side  of  the  graveyard, 
where  a  heap  of  stones  was  half  sheltered  by 
a  dislocated  roof  whose  broken  tiles  hung  down 
like  red  autumn  leaves  on  a  trellis — "that  was 
my  house,  and  that  long  stone  was  the  thresh- 
old; I  put  it  back  into  place. 

"On  that  stone  my  daughter  and  my  daugh- 
ter's daughter  stood  in  the  doorway,  waiting 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  197 

for  it  to  be  four  o'clock.  We  could  not  speak; 
in  the  room  behind  us  the  clock  was  ticking 
off  the  seconds,  and  that  made  our  hearts  beat. 
We  were  waiting  for  the  church-clock  to  strike 
four.  I  am  a  widower  and  my  daughter  is 
forty-four  years  old;  her  husband  had  been 
taken  away  the  day  before;  my  granddaughter 
is  twenty-five  years  old.  Twenty-six  women 
were  taken  away  as  if  they  had  been  cattle 
bought  at  the  market.  They  went  off  by  that 
road;  our  trees  were  still  standing  then,  and 
only  the  day  before  the  women  had  been  busy 
nipping  off  cherry-buds. 

"The  officer  who  had  charge  of  the  job  was 
a  young  lieutenant;  he  did  not  like  to  look  us 
in  the  face,  and  kept  whistling  one  of  their 
tunes,  and  flicking  his  boots  with  his  riding- 
whip. 

"I  was  the  oldest  man,  and  I  asked  him  if 
he  would  allow  me  to  load  a  donkey  with 
some  bundles  of  clothes,  some  more  blankets, 
and  shoes. 

"He  grunted  out  that  it  was  Verboten,* 
and  hit  harder  at  his  boots. 

"So  they  went  away  like  thieves,  between 
German  soldiers  with  fixed  bayonets.  I  can't 
tell  you  how  we  felt." 


198  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

Old  Eustache  took  out  his  pipe,  looked  at 
his  companions,  spat  upon  the  ground,  and 
was  silent. 

In  a  moment  he  went  on: 

"Then  we  men  went  into  the  fields.  From 
a  corner  of  my  cherry-orchard  there  was  a 
good  view  of  the  turn  in  the  road,  and  some 
of  my  friends  who  are  here  now  will  remem- 
ber"— and  he  looked  at  his  companions — 
"that  they  joined  me  there.  We  said  to  each 
other:  'We  shall  see  them  once  more,  at  the 
turn  of  the  road,  although  the  daylight  is 
failing.'  We  stood  there  watching  for  them, 
but  not  close  together,  because  we  were  for- 
bidden to  stand  in  groups,  and  all  at  once  we 
thought  we  must  be  dreaming,  for  we  heard 
them  singing.  They  were  far  away  already,  and 
it  sounded  sweetly,  like  chanting  in  church. 

"Do  you  know  what  our  women  were  sing- 
ing, with  the  German  bayonets  all  around 
them?  The  ^ Marseillaise^ !^^  The  old  man 
laughed,  showing  his  yellow  teeth,  where  the 
pipe  had  made  a  gap.  He  laughed  for  sheer 
pride  and  satisfaction,  as  parents  do  when 
they  tell  you  some  exploit  of  their  children 
which  they  think  very  clever.  And  he  summed 
up  his  impressions  by  saying:  "They  certainly 
went  off  bravely." 


w 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  199 

After  a  pause  he  went  on: 

"But  that  wasn't  all.  That  same  evening 
another  notice  was  stuck  up,  ordering  us  to 
make  bundles  of  all  the  clothes  and  linen 
which  we  still  had,  and  to  take  them  to  the 
church.  It  was  a  queer  order,  but  for  two 
years  and  a  half  hardly  a  day  had  passed 
without  a  placard  telling  us  to  do  or  not  to  do 
something. 

"This  order  made  it  easier  for  them;  if  we 
took  all  our  clothes  to  the  church,  they 
wouldn't  have  the  trouble  of  going  to  our 
houses  for  them.  Then  came  still  another 
order;  it  was  our  turn  to  go,  all  of  us;  the  vil- 
lage was  to  be  cleared  out,  and  we  were  to 
load  a  donkey  with  all  the  food  we  had  on 
hand.  You  know  we  received  our  supplies  from 
the  American  committee  every  fortnight; 
those  who  had  any  money  paid,  and  those  who 
were  too  poor  were  given  vouchers  by  the  vil- 
lage, so  they  were  not  left  out.  Every  one  got 
something,  and  when  the  order  came  to  go, 
we  had  provisions  for  a  week  ahead.  They 
took  us  to  a  farm  ten  kilometres  away  and  left 
us  there;  there  were  sixty-six  of  us,  counting 
the  children.  We  heard  the  noise  of  firing,  and 
knew  the  French  must  be  coming  and  the 
Germans  clearing  out.  As  the  French  and 


200  TBE^W^Jh  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

German  shells  went  about  their  business  they 
crossed  over  our  heads.  We  were  between  the 
two  firing-lines.  We  lived  on  the  food  we  had 
brought  with  us,  but  we  couldn't  tell  how  long 
we  might  be  there,  and  we  began  to  count  the 
grains  of  coffee  and  rice.  We  slept,  if  we  could 
get  any  sleep,  all  crowded  together  on  some 
straw  in  a  barn.  One  night  we  heard  a  shell — 
it  was  a  French  one — coming  through  the  air 
with  a  noise  like  a  locomotive;  it  fell  on  a 
woman  who  was  lying  there,  and  crushed  both 
her  legs.  We  had  no  linen,  nothing  to  help  her 
with,  but  the  women  had  washed  their  che- 
mises at  the  fountain,  and  they  tore  them  up 
to  make  bandages.  The  woman  couldn't  help 
crying  out,  and  her  old  man,  who  was  next  her, 
said:  'Don't  scream  so  loud,  or  else  the  others 
may  be  afraid.* 

"The  eighth  day  was  a  Thursday,  and  we 
were  as  if  we  had  been  on  a  raft  after  a  storm. 
The  rice  was  used  up  and  we  had  no  more 
bread,  but  we  knew  the  French  were  coming 
nearer.  By  noon  they  were  so  close  that  we 
could  see  their  uniforms,  but  we  didn't  know 
what  all  that  light  blue  meant,  and  we  didn't 
recognize  their  helmets.  We  hadn't  any  French 
flag,  so  we  tied  a  white  cloth  to  the  end  of  a 


WITH  OUR  FPI       OS  201 

pole,  and  then  we  saw  one  soldier,  and  then 
two  and  then  three,  running  toward  us,  run- 
ning fast,  because  the  Germans  behind  us  were 
still  firing.  Sometimes  we  thought  we  saw  our 
men  fall,  but  it  was  only  because  they  would 
drop  into  a  hole  to  take  shelter  for  a  minute, 
and  then  their  helmets  and  heads  would  show 
again  as  they  went  on. 

"We  went  on  waving  our  pole,  and  they 
knew  what  we  meant.  Then  you  said,  Julien  " 
— and  he  looked  at  the  other  old  man — 
*''Why  don't  we  do  as  the  women  did,  and 
sing  the  ^'Marseillaise^' ?^  We  were  like  mad- 
men, but  the  little  soldier  who  was  running 
toward  us  understood,  and  he  waved  his  rifle 
at  us.  When  he  and  his  two  comrades  got  to 
where  we  were  they  were  all  out  of  breath. 
The  women  were  heating  them  some  coffee 
when  another  French  shell  struck  quite  close 
to  the  farm.  Then  the  first  soldier  started  up 
— he  was  a  sharpshooter;  I  wish  you  had  seen 
him — and  he  cried  out,  'This  won't  do!'  and 
he  ran  back  again  under  fire,  calling  out  to 
the  men  who  were  coming  on :  *  They're  French 
people  here!  Stop  firing!'  In  about  an  hour 
the  troops  came  up  and  we  were  free.  I  tell  you 
I  think  we  were  all  out  of  our  heads.  And  then 


202  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

we  wanted  to  go  back  to  the  village;  we  had 
seen  from  the  farm  that  there  had  been  neither 
smoke  nor  flames  over  it,  so  we  knew  it  had 
not  been  set  on  fire,  and  we  were  glad.  We  got 
back  on  a  Friday,  sixty-five  of  us,  for  the 
woman  whose  legs  had  been  crushed  was  dead. 
This  is  what  we  found" — and  he  pointed  to 
the  ruins.  "The  battering-ram  was  here,  as  it 
is  to-day;  it's  a  sort  of  curiosity.  And  all  our 
trees  were  cut  down,  as  you  see  them  now. 
There  was  not  a  single  roof  left;  we  sent  the 
women  and  children  to  Noyon,  and  we  men 
have  stayed  on,  getting  things  together  as  far 
as  we  can,  and  the  army  feeds  us.  You  may  go 
wherever  you  like  in  this  part  of  the  country, 
you  will  find  the  same  story  everywhere." 

The  old  man  had  spoken  without  any  heat, 
and  now  he  was  silent  again,  as  if  his  thoughts 
were  in  the  past. 

Around  us,  along  the  road,  in  the  orchards, 
even  in  the  graveyard  were  the  cherry-trees, 
all  cut  down,  all  fallen  the  same  way,  showing 
their  fresh  white  wounds,  and  all  crowned 
with  their  white  blossoms  in  honor  of  Spring. 
The  sap  had  risen  in  them  before  they  were 
murdered,  filling  the  branches,  pushing  out  the 
buds,  only  to  crown  the  dead.  All  that  was 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  203 

most  precious  and  most  alive  in  spring  was  in 
a  fragrant  foam  of  white  and  pink,  flowering 
for  the  last  time  above  the  ruins  and  beside 
the  open  graves. 

We  had  oftfen  before  seen  orchards  in  May 
ravaged  by  hail  or  tempest;  we  had  lamented 
that  so  much  beauty  and  promise  should 
strew  the  ground,  and  had  felt  as  if  the  drip- 
ping and  denuded  branches  must  be  weeping 
ifor  what  they  had  lost,  but  that  was  nothing 
compared  to  seeing  these  trees  lying  on  the 
ground,  hacked  to  death,  and  yet  still  wearing 
their  lavish  beauty.  It  was  almost  as  if  one 
should  see  a  smile  on  the  face  of  a  child  whose 
head  has  been  severed  from  its  body. 

"One  would  never  have  thought  of  that,'* 
said  the  old  man  with  a  twisted  smile,  which 
drew  his  lips  until  they  showed  the  gap  in  his 
teeth.  With  his  foot,  shod  with  a  dilapidated 
boot,  he  gently  touched  a  branch  where  the 
buds  were  still  rolled  into  little  pink  balls 
under  the  shining  lacquer  of  their  encasing 
leaves.  The  air  was  full  of  a  smell  like  honey, 
and  some  of  the  groups  of  blossoms  hung  down 
into  the  desecrated  graves.  Death  was  all 
death  no  longer,  nor  was  life  really  life.  These 
three-and-twenty  men  had  been  shipwrecked 


204  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

upon  deep  waters  of  misfortune;  the  profes- 
sors in  the  science  of  devastation  had  known 
just  how  to  lift  the  flood-gates. 


All  around  the  churchyard  walls  were  rows 
of  wooden  crosses,  and  these  had  been  re- 
spected. There  were  so  many  more  than  the 
enclosure  could  hold  that  they  had  overflowed 
through  a  gap  in  the  low  wall,  and  spread  out 
toward  the  open  fields.  Old  cities  have  been 
obliged  to  submit  to  breaches  in  their  encir- 
cling walls  in  order  that  modern  life  may  flow 
out  into  their  suburbs,  but  here  it  was  not  the 
living  which  needed  more  room,  but  the  dead. 
All  these  graves  were  of  men  who  fell  in  1914; 
we  may  have  seen  them  as  they  went  off  sing- 
ing in  the  crowded  trains  that  followed  one 
another  as  closely  as  flower-decked  carts  in 
autumn,  laden  with  grapes  for  the  wine-press. 
The  crosses  were  surmounted  by  kepis,  once 
red  but  now  faded  and  discolored  by  sun  and 
rain;  the  bodies  of  their  wearers  were  picked 
up  in  the  neighboring  roads  and  fields,  where 
their  red  caps  and  trousers  had  made  them 
conspicuous  targets. 

The  association  of  the  "Souvenir  Frangais" 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  205 

had  already  placed  its  emblem  in  the  centre  of 
each  cross,  and  in  a  line  with  it  new  rosettes 
of  the  sacred  colors  shone  like  marks  of  honor. 
The  arms  of  the  crosses  touch  at  their  ends; 
they  kept  orderly  ranks,  like  unflinching 
soldiers. 

O  graves  of  our  fighting  men,  O  wooden 
cross,  crux  lignis,  when  our  hands  touch  you 
in  these  liberated  villages,  when  we  shall  em- 
brace you  later  in  the  France  not  yet  set  free, 
what  other  word  can  come  to  our  lips  but  that 
by  which  we  hail  the  cross  of  the  Saviour: 

0  Crux  Ave  .  .  .  Spes  unica. 

Worship — ^that  is  to  say,  love  and  prayer, 
the  spontaneous  impulse  to  give  our  puny 
selves  to  France — ^is  what  alone  will  preserve 
us  from  the  vanity  of  words  and  the  weakness 
of  tears. 

0  Crux  Ave  .  .  .  Spes  unica. 

Have  we  then  set  our  hopes  on  the  dead  ^ 
Yes,  for  some  of  our  dead  are  more  alive  than 
men  who  still  breathe.  "He  who  loseth  his  life 
shall  save  it"  were  the  words  of  our  Lord. 

The  Old  Testament  comes  down  to  us  from 
men  of  times  long  gone,  but  these  new  men 
who  lie  here  have  also  left  us  a  testament, 
which  is  a  symbol. 


206  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

Crux  lignis,  humble  and  magnificent  cross, 
cut  from  the  wood  of  our  forest-trees,  we  shall 
see  thee  on  the  days  when  we  commemorate 
the  Passion,  and  the  priest  lifts  as  far  as  his 
arm  can  reach  the  symbol  of  our  redemption 
— ^the  Cross.  We  shall  see  the  body  and  the 
blood  of  our  dead,  as  we  loved  them  while 
they  were  living  and  our  own,  each  time  when, 
in  the  Canon  of  the  mass,  the  sacred  offering 
of  the  Host  is  renewed,  held  high  in  silence 
above  our  bowed  heads. 


The  old  man  was  right;  the  story  was  the 
same  as  we  drove  about  the  country;  one  scene 
of  devastation  followed  another.  We  met 
hardly  any  living  men,  but  here  and  there  on 
the  edge  of  the  road,  or  by  itself  in  a  field,  we 
saw  a  spot  of  color  like  a  fading  poppy,  the 
red  kepi  and  the  cross  that  marked  a  grave. 

First  it  was  Candor,  then  Champieu,  where 
we  found  by  actual  count  that  nine  ghosts  had 
come  back.  Ognolles,  Beaulieu,  les  Fontaines 
(a  market-town);  these  were  the  last  villages 
invaded,  and  the  first  set  free;  all  this  border 
was  swept  by  gun-fire,  and  only  given  back  to 
us  because  another  line  was  formed  in  the  rear 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  207 

— ^for  the  France  already  freed  is  only  a  part 
of  the  France  still  invaded.  The  highway  was 
red,  because  it  was  mended  with  tiles  torn 
from  the  roofs  of  houses,  and  all  the  roads 
were  marked  by  prostrate  trees.  Here,  in  this 
orchard,  a  cure  was  shot,  as  the  Germans 
charged  that  he  had  communicated  with  our 
men  by  means  of  machinery  hidden  in  his 
cellar.  Our  priests  everjrwhere  were  accused 
of  a  sort  of  magic;  they  were  said  to  give  our 
soldiers  warning  by  signs  from  their  church- 
towers,  or  through  their  church-bells,  or  else 
underground,  from  their  cellars. 

A  newly  made  grave  at  the  corner  of  a 
house  bore  this  inscription:  "To  my  dear 
papa,  shot  by  cowards,"  and  another,  not  far 
off:  "To  my  son,  shot  in  his  mother's  house." 
We  were  also  shown  the  four  stone  steps  where 
a  child  stood  at  his  father's  door,  shaking  his 
fist  at  his  new  masters  as  they  marched  into 
the  village,  and  pretending  to  throw  stones 
at  them.  On  that  very  spot,  outside  the  house 
where  he  was  born,  on  the  door-step  where  as 
a  schoolboy  he  had  played  marbles  only  a 
month  before,  the  men  in  gray  caps  tied  him 
to  the  little  iron  railing;  the  marks  of  the 
bullets  that  killed  him  may  be  seen  on  the 


208  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

wall.  I  remember  seeing  in  Lorraine,  two 
months  ago,  the  bullet-marks  on  a  wall  where 
some  women  who  had  taken  refuge  in  a  cellar 
were  dragged  out  and  shot. 

The  little  boy's  grave  was  all  covered  with 
lilies-of-the-valley,  as  pure  as  the  little  vic- 
tim's soul.  While  they  held  the  village  the 
Germans  tried  to  conceal  it,  even  set  a  watch 
over  it,  but  every  one  knew  where  it  was, 
and  now  it  has  been  remade  and  lovingly 
planted  with  white  flowers,  to  be  held  in  ever- 
lasting remembrance. 

But  all  the  invaders  have  not  left  the  vil- 
lage; here  are  the  pompous  graves  of  German 
soldiers,  their  marble  headstones  covered  with 
grandiloquent  inscriptions.  ''Tapferer  Held'' 
(brave  hero)  is  the  most  frequent  term,  and 
one  that  would  never  be  found  even  on  the 
most  illustrious  grave  in  France.  ^^Tapjerer 
Held''  is  the  language  of  Walhalla.  How  much 
finer  by  comparison  are  our  simple  and  truth- 
ful words  "Killed  in  battle"  ! 

In  the  cemeteries  the  French  and  German 
graves  stand  facing  each  other  in  close  lines, 
as  if  still  ready  for  the  fight.  I  heard  the  foot- 
steps of  Morton  and  Rivards  behind  me;  they 
stood  a  little  apart,  each  absorbed  in  his  own 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  209 

thoughts;  it  was  easy  to  see  that  these  graves 
of  French  soldiers  were  full  of  meaning  for 
the  Americans,  who  had  just  come  into  the 
war.  They  both  sat  down  on  the  trunk  of  a 
tree,  evidently  somewhat  depressed,  although 
the  air  was  soft  and  balmy;  their  minds  were 
following  the  same  train  of  thought  as  our 
own. 

"The  day  will  soon  come,"  said  Morton, 
simply  and  gravely,  "when  we  also  shall  make 
pilgrimages  to  the  French  cemeteries  to  visit 
the  graves  of  our  dead — of  our  men  who  are 
not  yet  even  soldiers,  who  have  grown  to 
manhood  without  having  ever  dreamt  of 
war,''  and  he  murmured  in  a  low  voice,  as  if 
speaking  to  himself:  "They  will  be  in  a  field 
like  this,  a  French  field,  and  it  may  be  that 
their  crosses  will  be  made  from  one  of  these 
apple-trees  which  have  been  cut  down  ...  it 
is  very  extraordinary." 

"Yes,"  said  Rivards,  "it  is  extraordinary, 
but  also  logical.  The  war  provoked  by  Ger- 
many is  an  aggression  against  our  ideals.  She 
would  grind  the  nations  to  powder,  as  she  has 
ground  these  villages.  Her  aggressiveness  is 
the  most  extraordinary  thing  of  all;  in  the 
present  state  of  our  civilization  we  had  never 


210  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

■I     I     II      I  III  II I       »      I  II 

imagined  that  a  whole  people  would  deUber- 
ately  and  wiUingly  turn  back  to  barbarism. 
...  It  is  only  logical  that  we  should  rise  against 
her,  and  that  one  result  should  be  that  we 
shall  lie  here,  side  by  side  with  you,  because 
we  have  all  fallen  in  defense  of  our  common 
faith.'' 

*'Do  you  remember,"  said  Morton,  "the 
political  doctrine  which  used  to  be  taught  in 
our  universities  ?  It  was  that  of  Washington 
and  Jefferson.  We  were  enjoined  to  stand  aloof 
from  the  old  quarrels  which  have  burdened 
past  centuries,  making  a  turmoil  the  echoes  of 
which  still  resound  through  European  coun- 
tries. We  were  exempt,  so  to  speak,  from  the 
original  sin  of  nations — ^war  which  breeds  war. 
We  were  born  spotless;  there  was  no  ignorant 
barbarism  in  the  background  of  our  history, 
no  debt  of  blood  to  be  paid,  no  age-long  retal- 
iation to  be  carried  out;  our  New  World  had 
never  known  childhood;  it  was  the  result  of 
deep  and  deliberate  study  on  the  part  of  those 
who  constructed  it;  they  desired  that  it 
should  be  as  near  perfection  as  was  possible, 
and,  above  all,  that  it  should  stand  always 
for  the  right.  We  were  taught  to  feel  the 
moral  beauty  of  a  peace  which  should  allow 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  211 

each  man  and  each  group  of  men  a  full  share 
of  liberty,  and  this  during  a  period  when 
Germany  was  inculcating  the  moral  beauty 
of  war,  because  through  it  came  strength  able 
to  master  the  world.  Those  diametrically  op- 
posed principles  each  developed  inmiense  and 
contradictory  forces;  it  was  inevitable  that 
they  should  sooner  or  later  come  into  violent 
conflict.  We  had  believed  that  we  could  escape 
war,  as  the  alchemists  of  former  times,  de- 
voted to  the  discovery  of  the  philosopher's 
stone,  believed  that  if  they  found  it  they 
could  escape  death.  But  if  those  who  deliber- 
ately resolve  on  war  refuse  the  benefits  of 
peace,  those  who  are  deliberately  resolved  to 
have  peace  do  not  refuse  their  share  of  the 
suffering  induced  by  war.  We  are  faithful  to 
our  own  souls  and  to  our  worship  of  liberty 
when  we  take  up  arms  against  the  Germans 
who  are  endeavoring,  in  the  name  of  their  in- 
sensate pride  and  their  former  barbarities,  to 
exterminate  what  has  been  slowly  created 
during  the  centuries  by  the  higher  thought 
and  by  brotherly  love.  The  spirit  of  Wash- 
ington will  lead  our  first  armies  overseas. 

*'I  agree  with  what  you  say  as  to  the  Ger- 
mans invoking  their  former  barbarities,"  said 


212  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

Morton.  "They  are  intolerably  ostentatious 
in  dragging  out  of  limbo  spectres  which  were 
the  horror  of  the  ancient  world.  History  for 
them  is  nothing  but  a  series  of  reprisals. 

"Do  you  remember,  Rivards,  how  often 
they  acknowledged  this  ?  How  many  times 
they  spoke  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  which, 
according  to  them,  had  made  their  country  a 
desert  ?  But  it  was  they  themselves  who,  like 
quarrelsome  ants  from  neighboring  ant-hills, 
had  devoured  each  other  without  mercy,  and 
when  France  took  any  part  it  was  for  Ger- 
many against  Gustavus  Adolphus.  The  Thirty 
Years'  War  is  only  a  word  to  conjure  with.  It 
was  the  German  mercenary  bands  who  could 
be  bought  and  sold  in  any  market  who  pil- 
laged, killed,  burned,  and  laid  waste.  The 
Thirty  Years'  War  was  really  a  great  civil 
conflict,  but  that  they  prefer  to  ignore.  I  re- 
member very  well  a  great  hulking  German 
officer,  whose  red  face  was  seamed  all  over 
with  rapier  scars;  we  were  dining  together  at 
Charleroi  after  going  our  rounds  in  a  district 
where  all  the  French  factories  had  been  gutted 
of  their  machinery.  We  had  seen  their  whole 
equipment  on  its  way  to  Germany  in  heavily 
laden  trains.  We  were  discussing  this,  when 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  213 

suddenly  he  looked  full  at  me  and  said,  with 
such  vehemence  that  the  scars  on  his  face 
turned  purple:  'You  don't  know  what  Ger- 
many suffered  while  you  were  singing  your 
Puritan  hymns  beside  your  new  rivers  and 
elaborating  your  ideal  constitutions.'  I  can 
see  him  still,  as  he  repeated  a  grim  saying  of 
the  Kaiser's,  while  he  passed  his  big  hand 
rapidly  over  the  wood  of  the  table,  'We  will 
give  you  back  invaded  France,  but  not  until 
we  have  razed  it  to  the  ground,'  and  again 
his  hand  made  the  gesture  of  a  mower  mak- 
ing a  clean  sweep  with  his  scythe. 

''Then,  going  back  to  our  eternal  argument, 
he  added:  'Look  here,  Morton,  we  are  not 
any  crueller  toward  France  in  taking  from 
her  what  we  need  than  you  were  toward  Ger- 
many in  sending  munitions  to  France  and 
England.  We  must  all  live,  my  dear  fellow, 
and  we  Germans  have  not  always  been  able 
to  live  as  we  should  have  done.  We  need  new 
machinery  for  our  new  factories,  we  need 
able-bodied  men  and  also  women  and  young 
girls;  we  are  short  of  hands  as  well  as  of 
machines.  Germany  is  a  god,  and  gods  must 
have  sacrifices.'  And  I  recollect  the  singular 
tone  in  which  he  added:  'You  Americans  are 


214  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

not  human;  you  were  not  born  in  the  ordinary 
way;  you  are  the  children  of  a  constitution.' 
He  laughed  as  he  emptied  his  glass,  and  the 
veins  stood  out  on  his  temples.  'As  for  war, 
it  was  not  taught  us  at  school,  nor  in  the  uni- 
versities, nor  even  the  barracks — ^we  learned  it 
in  our  mother's  womb.'" 

Morton  stopped  speaking.  The  day  was 
drawing  to  its  close.  We  all  looked  silently  at 
the  ruins,  and  thought  of  the  "able-bodied 
men'*  and  of  the  women  and  young  girls  who, 
on  the  very  eve  of  their  deliverance  from  their 
long  agony,  had  been  forced  to  set  their  faces 
toward  Germany  as  prisoners.  The  cattle  and 
the  carts  they  once  drew  had  all  disappeared; 
ploughs  and  scythes,  broken  beyond  mend- 
ing, lay  among  the  rubbish,  and  in  front  of 
the  church  the  battering-ram,  with  its  iron 
tusks,  reared  its  gibbet-like  shape.  Over  the 
broken-down  wall  we  saw  the  heads  of  some 
horses;  they  shook  their  manes  and  looked  at 
us  with  their  ignorant  bright  eyes.  Their  coats 
shone  with  metallic  reflections  in  the  waning 
sunshine;  they  were  annoyed  by  the  flies 
buzzing  around  them,  and  we  could  hear  the 
ring  of  their  shod  hoofs  as  they  stamped  on 
the  stones.   Their  halters  were  fastened   to 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  215 

the  branches  of  the  felled  trees;  two  children 
were  playing  near  them,  and  the  golden  sun- 
light fell  on  their  hair  and  eyes;  bees  were 
busily  humming  among  the  flowering 
branches,  alighting,  taking  their  tribute  of 
pollen,  and  flying  off  triumphantly  with  their 
booty,  while  on  the  cross-bar  of  the  gibbet  a 
robin  sang  his  heart  out  to  his  mate. 


In  order  to  take  our  motor-car  again  we 
had  to  go  the  whole  length  of  the  village 
street,  and  it  seemed  strange  to  find  human 
beings  among  such  indescribable  destruction. 
For  there  were  both  old  men  and  old  women 
at  work,  especially  old  men;  I  could  hear  the 
sharp  tapping  of  their  hammers.  These  ghosts 
did  not  seem  to  be  any  longer  particularly 
astonished;  they  had  acquired  the  calm  indif- 
ference which  nature  displays  before  her 
greatest  disasters,  and,  like  her,  they  had 
begun  to  repair  the  damage  done.  One  of  them 
had  collected  a  lot  of  unbroken  tiles,  with 
which  he  was  putting  a  roof  on  a  shed,  and 
he  said  his  old  wife  would  be  able  to  come 
from  Noyon  the  next  day,  as  he  had  a  shelter 
for  her.  He  picked  up  his  tiles,  selected  and 


216  THE  ]^OUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

placed  them,  stooping  and  standing  upright 
again  with  the  regularity  of  a  pulse  that  can 
only  be  stopped  by  death.  Another  was  plan- 
ing boards  at  an  improvised  carpenter's  bench; 
the  yellow  shavings  hissed  and  curled  as  he 
made  a  door  for  the  gaping  blank  above  his 
threshold.  It  was  death,  and  yet  already  the 
renascence;  although  the  little  gardens  were 
in  disorder,  and  held  great  bristling  balls  of 
barbed  wire,  left  behind  by  the  invaders, 
branches  of  foliage  were  set  out  in  regular 
rows,  and  in  their  shelter  tufts  of  peas  and 
beans  were  coming  up,  twisting  around  their 
poles,  and  holding  up  the  rings  of  their  first 
tendrils  toward  the  sunlight. 

We  went  into  one  of  these  makeshift  lodg- 
ings, where  everything,  doors  and  their  fast- 
enings, roofs  and  window-casings,  had  had 
to  be  made  out  of  whatever  came  to  hand.  An 
old  woman  was  lying  on  a  mattress  on  the 
ground;  the  German  soldiers  billeted  in  her 
house  had  made  her  get  out  of  her  bed  and 
had  taken  it  with  them,  together  with  her 
wardrobe,  her  crockery,  her  linen — even  down 
to  her  chests  and  stools — ^nothing  was  left  of 
all  her  humble  and  dear  belongings.  A  pho- 
tograph of  what  had  been  the  family  was  still 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  217 

hanging  on  the  wall,  a  fine  group  of  country 
people.  The  old  woman's  skinny  finger  pointed 
out  its  different  members:  "My  son — he  was 
taken  off  as  a  hostage;  my  son" — ^again — ^''he 
died  during  the  occupation;  my  daughter-in- 
law — deported  with  her  two  girls '';  and  the 
shaking  finger  touched  the  likeness  of  two 
young  faces,  scarcely  to  be  told  apart,  with 
braided  hair  above  their  girlish  brows — and 
then  the  old  hand  pointed  through  the 
broken  window-frame  to  show  the  road  by 
which  they  had  disappeared. 


We  dined  that  evening  with  our  friends  in 
an  underground  shelter  dug  by  the  Germans 
in  what  had  been  the  park  of  a  French  cha- 
teau. There  was  nothing  left  now  but  a 
tangled  disorder  of  felled  and  mutilated  trees, 
and  all  that  remained  of  the  chateau  was  a 
few  side-walls  and  a  heap  of  rubbish.  When 
the  men  who  had  lived  in  it  for  two  years 
were  obliged  to  leave,  they  mined  it  and  blew 
it  up. 

Before  we  arrived  the  soft  spring  night  was 
closing  in,  and  a  storm  was  coming.  Heavy 
purple  and  reddish  clouds  were  piled  up,  and 


218  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

then  over  them  was  drawn  a  dark  mist;  a 
slight  shower  ran  across  the  sky,  bent  low 
above  the  earth.  When  the  shower  had  passed, 
the  spaces  of  the  air  opened  again,  and  the 
fantastic  architecture  of  the  clouds  moved  in 
golden  glory  over  the  desolate  and  silent  land. 
The  earth  was  humble  with  the  humility  of 
death;  the  heavenly  purple  refulgence  fell  only 
on  devastation. 

As  we  went  along  the  road,  which  was  red- 
dish where  the  holes  and  ruts  had  been  filled 
in  with  crushed  bricks,  we  met  a  column  of 
troops.  We  heard  their  marching-song  before 
we  saw  them,  for  the  wind  carried  their  voices 
across  the  silent  fields.  Suddenly  the  head  of 
the  column  swung  round  a  turn  in  the  road, 
and  our  eyes  were  dazzled  by  the  slanting 
rays  of  the  setting  sun  striking  on  their  hel- 
mets. The  first  impression  was  strangely  as  if 
all  the  blue  of  French  horizons  had  been 
made  into  men,  and  was  pouring  itself  be- 
tween the  divine  glow  of  the  heavens  and  the 
dingy  red  of  the  earth. 

It  was  only  a  momentary  vision,  and  the 
men  had  passed  by.  The  land  was  humiliated, 
but  they,  its  soldiers,  were  proud  and  cheer- 
ful as  they  sang,  each  with  field-flowers  stuck 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  219 

in  his  rifle,  for  the  Germans,  who  had  sowed 
and  tilled  our  fields,  could  not  carry  away 
our  clover  and  sainfoin. 

The  men  passed  by;  all  of  the  same  age, 
their  bright  eyes  somewhat  sunken,  and  the 
same  war-hardened  expression  on  every  young 
face;  their  packs  weighed  heavily  on  their 
shoulders,  but  their  step  was  firm  and  elastic. 
We  held  out  cigarettes,  or,  rather,  threw 
them,  for  the  men  were  marching  so  fast 
that  they  could  hardly  catch  anything,  nor 
could  they  break  step,  as  the  imperious 
rhythm  of  the  bugles  led  them  on. 

"Where  are  you  going?"  we  cried.  They 
answered  by  pointing  vaguely  toward  the 
west,  in  the  direction  of  the  border  of  a  little 
wood.  Their  task  here  was  done;  this  part  of 
France  was  again  free;  they  were  going  on- 
ward to  the  new  frontier  of  invaded  France. 
The  crimson  glow  in  the  heavens  chased  the 
clouds  from  over  their  heads,  and  seemed  to 
follow  them.  The  blue  wave  went  on;  the  earth 
still  vibrated  to  the  regular  cadence  of  their 
march,  and  the  air  to  that  of  their  song — and 
then  silence  fell  again;  the  gold  and  crimson 
faded  over  the  fields,  and  the  column  melted 
into  the  grayish  blue  of  the  horizon. 


220  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

A  few  women,  standing  on  their  desolate 
thresholds,  looked  dreamily  after  the  blue 
files  as  they  grew  smaller  and  smaller,  and 
then  turned  back  quietly  into  their  nonde- 
script shelters.  The  gray  of  the  evening  cov- 
ered the  destruction  as  if  with  ashes,  and  the 
ruined  houses  were  as  empty  shells  tossed 
upon  a  beach  by  a  careless  wave. 

As  we  hurried  toward  our  halting-place  we 
said  to  Morton : 

"We  have  seen  the  old  god.  It  is  the  crea- 
ture in  the  village  square  before  the  church, 
the  gibbet,  the  battering-ram,  with  its  iron 
tusks,  to  tear  open  and  beat  down  peaceful 
French  homes.  And  then  just  afterward  we 
have  seen  what  Mrs.  Vernon  spoke  of  the 
other  evening — ^the  young  god  as  he  passed 

by." 

*  * 

It  was  almost  dark  by  the  time  we  reached 
B.  I  did  not  recognize  the  place;  the  very 
look  of  France  is  changed — ^I  mean  where  it 
has  been  invaded  by  the  Germans.  Land- 
marks have  disappeared,  and  the  horizon  line 
is  not  the  same.  I  knew  that  the  chateau  had 
been  destroyed,  and  yet  I  was  amazed  to  see 
only  vacant   space  where  I   had   known   it 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  221 

standing  four-square  on  its  solid  foundations. 
I  had  expected  to  see  what  we  call  ruins — 
empty  arches  framing  only  the  familiar  land- 
scape, the  thicket  of  birches,  the  stream  flow- 
ing under  banks  bright  with  Bengal  roses, 
the  smiling  meadows  where  the  cows  lay 
ruminating  in  lazy  quiet.  And  to  the  right 
there  used  to  be  the  factory,  with  its  big 
chimneys  never  tired  of  vomiting  out  their 
black  spirals.  ... 

I  recognized  only  the  curve  of  the  stream, 
running  drearily  between  its  torn  and  de- 
nuded banks.  An  old  keeper  and  his  wife  had 
remained  during  the  invasion,  and  I  walked 
about  among  the  piles  of  rubbish  with  them. 
He  told  me  that  just  before  the  Germans  fell 
back,  one  morning  when  he  and  his  wife  were 
silently  rejoicing  within  themselves  because 
the  enemy  was  preparing  to  go  and  leave  the 
place  empty,  they  saw  the  old  house  seem  to 
start  up  for  an  instant,  and  then  fall  back 
upon  itself.  Dull  subterranean  rumblings  went 
with  this  phenomenon,  arid  when  at  last  the 
thick  clouds  of  acrid  smoke  which  hung  for 
a  long  time  about  the  spot  had  cleared  away, 
they  could  only  see  the  empty  space  which 
had  bewildered  me. 


222  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

Here,  as  everywhere  else,  it  is  the  monotony 
of  these  occurrences  which  makes  them  so 
terrible;  able-bodied  men,  women,  and  young 
girls  were  carried  away  with  the  cattle  and  the 
machines.  Human  beings  and  inanimate  things 
were  equally  prey,  and  went  together  to  make 
up  the  booty.  Under  the  tall  and  fragrant 
lime-trees  is  the  wrought-iron  gate,  of  old 
French  workmanship,  where  our  friend  Count 
B.,  the  master  of  the  chateau,  stood  to  wel- 
come us  in  those  days  of  a  former  life  that  we 
used  to  call  peace.  He  stayed  in  his  house,  al- 
though it  was  occupied  by  the  staff  of  Prince 
E.,  because  he  was  the  mayor  of  the  village, 
and  our  American  friends  recollect  that  he 
took  charge  of  the  food  supplies. 

He  also  was  carried  away  as  a  hostage, 
while  his  house  rose  from  the  earth  and  then 
subsided  upon  its  old  foundations.  He  was 
part  of  the  baggage  of  the  staff,  borne  off  as 
wild  beasts,  chased  out  of  their  dens,  drag 
their  prey  with  them.  Where  was  he  ?  No  one 
knew,  and  the  few  old  people  who  are  still 
here  spoke  of  his  disappearance  with  a  sort 
of  terror.  "They  took  him  away,"  they  say, 
and  always  with  the  same  gesture,  pointing 
to  the  road.  One  expected  to  have  them  make 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  223 

the  sign  of  the  cross,  as  if  they  had  seen  the 
devil  and  his  angels. 

Nothing  is  so  monotonous  in  nature  or  in 
life  as  that  which  is  excessive;  the  heart  and 
mind  both  become  exhausted  from  gazing 
into  an  abyss.  Here  there  was  no  varied  and 
complex  play  of  thought,  no  shade  of  mean- 
ing to  be  discovered;  everywhere  there  was  the 
same  unchanging  and  funereal  gesture  of  de- 
struction wherever  old  people,  or  men,  or 
children  have  lived  and  loved  and  believed  in 
life,  drinking  from  its  brimming  cup  gladly. 
Words  failed  before  this  barren  repetition, 
and  a  dull  amazement  crept  over  mind  and 
heart;  thought  stopped  in  confusion,  and  one 
despaired  of  humanity. 

They  have  written  "Nicht  aergern,  nur 
wundern,"  and  they  are  right,  because  for  a 
moment  our  ideas  of  our  divinely  appointed 
destiny,  of  justice,  and  of  an  overruling  Prov- 
idence withdraw  behind  the  veils  which  hide 
the  face  of  God. 

Here,  outside  the  park,  in  the  path  leading 
to  the  public  washing-place,  was  the  tree 
against  which  the  cure  leaned  and  waited, 
with  his  eyes  fixed  upon  his  breviary,  and 
with  a  calm  countenance,  the  bullets  which 


224  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

were  to  pierce  his  heart;  his  last  breath  mur- 
mured a  prayer. 

And  this  was  the  road,  between  the  fallen 
poplars,  over  which  the  women  and  young 
girls  were  driven,  like  some  new  sort  of 
cattle,  toward  the  German  stables.  As  they 
started  on  the  same  day,  at  the  same  signal, 
the  files  of  captives  from  different  villages 
must  often  have  met  and  recognized  each 
other,  as  they  had  done  before  on  holidays, 
on  the  feast  of  Saint  John,  for  instance,  when 
the  people  went,  laughing  and  gossiping, 
from  the  hamlets  to  the  market-towns,  to 
sing  at  vespers  and  dance  the  bourree  in  the 
evening. 

For  this  part  of  the  country  is  not  merely 
France,  it  is  the  oldest  France  of  all,  the  Ile- 
de-France,  where  the  joy  of  living  found  its 
highest  expression,  in  labor  and  in  love.  No 
other  soil  on  the  earth  has  been  kinder  or 
more  faithful  to  those  who  lived  by  it;  no- 
where else  have  men  so  burst  into  song,  as 
they  have  in  this  heart  of  our  old  life,  amus- 
ing themselves  by  playing  with  villanelles, 
matching  the  rhymes  of  tiercets,  and  polish- 
ing the  flowing  lines  of  sonnets,  to  garland 
the  beauty  of  French  existence.  The  walls  of 
our  churches  were  a  network  of  stone  stretched 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  225 

between  the  sapphires  and  emeralds  of  their 
glowing  windows;  the  passage  of  the  centuries 
and  the  vicissitudes  of  the  most  cruel  wars 
had  left  them  untouched.  Every  house,  every 
cottage,  had  its  own  air,  its  own  look,  its  own 
expression  of  continuity;  here  there  might  be 
a  dwelling  with  gables  on  the  street,  and 
muUioned  windows,  divided  by  graceful  col- 
umns, and  there  a  humble  abode  with  rough- 
cast walls  on  a  narrow  alley,  an  old  nest  shel- 
tered by  its  old  roof  on  the  old  soil.  Every- 
where one  found  traces  of  the  fine  distinctions 
which  our  forebears,  although  living  side  by 
side,  had  been  careful  to  establish,  as  mark- 
ing the  shades  of  difference  which  gave  life 
its  variety. 

The  haggard  face  of  the  moon,  once  veiled 
by  branching  trees,  shone  on  a  desert  as  we 
picked  our  way  through  the  ruins,  and  every 
now  and  then  our  feet  would  strike  some 
fragment  of  sculpture,  where  our  artisans  had 
wrought  a  vine-leaf,  a  spray  of  bindweed, 
the  sheath  of  a  buttercup,  or  an  acorn  and 
the  notched  outline  of  the  oak-leaf.  If  I  picked 
up  a  bit  of  broken  stone,  the  cold  light  showed 
me  the  careful  and  loving  work  of  an  old 
craftsman's  hand. 

We  dined  underground,  in  the  shelter  which 


226  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

the  German  prince  had  taken  pains  to  make 
comfortable.  The  old  chairs  of  gilded  wood 
and  the  ebony  table  were  still  there,  and  when 
the  growling  of  the  French  cannon  sounded 
too  near,  the  prince  and  his  staff  took  refuge 
here,  twenty-six  feet  down.  The  earth  of  the 
floor  and  walls  was  hidden  by  round  billets  of 
birchwood,  and  Bible  texts  were  scrawled  in 
Gothic  text  on  this  wooden  sheathing.  A 
frieze,  painted  on  unbleached  linen,  showed 
the  classic  German  landscape;  a  wide  river 
between  hills  and,  perched  on  the  crest  of 
each  hill,  a  town  bristling  with  turrets  and 
watch-towers.  This  was  the  lair  into  which"the 
beast  retired  to  think  out  his  plans  of  de- 
struction. 

The  evening  was  a  sad  one.  Our  American 
friends,  Morton  and  Rivards,  had  been  here 
three  months  ago  to  distribute  food,  as  the 
barges  bringing  it  came  up  a  canal  between 
two  bends  of  the  Oise,  not  far  away.  The 
women  waited  their  turns  patiently  at  the 
communal  depot,  and  then  went  off  together, 
carrying  their  scanty  bags  of  rice  and  coffee 
and  little  boxes  of  bacon  and  lard.  They  were 
still  in  prison,  but  a  ray  of  hope  had  filtered 
in.  They  dared  not  speak  to  the  Americans  in 
words,  but  their  faces,  haggard  with  fasting 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  227 

and  waiting,  spoke  for  them  when  the  rolHng 
of  the  French  guns  passed  over  their  heads. 
The  enemy  had  no  power  to  stop  that  ap- 
proaching thunder;  Hps  might  be  forbidden 
to  speak,  but  eyeUds  could  not  be  sealed,  and 
the  women's  eyes  spoke  and  hoped. 

"What  an  ignoble  idea  it  was,"  said  Morton, 
"to  carry  off  the  women  and  girls !  I  wonder 
what  German  head  thought  of  it  first !  It  pro- 
fanes humanity!"  he  added  gloomily. 

"  It  came  from  the  frenzy  of  gamblers  who 
had  staked  all  they  had  upon  what  they 
thought  was  sure  to  win,  and  who  found  they 
had  lost  the  game,"  said  Rivards.  "They  were 
playing  for  the  'Zukunft,'  a  word  to  which 
they  are  much  attached.  The  'Zukunft,'  the 
future — ^they  had  made  a  bargain  with  her, 
as  they  might  have  done  with  the  devil;  they 
sold  their  souls  and  the  lives  of  a  million  and 
a  half  of  their  men,  who  lie  here  on  the  bor- 
ders and  in  the  heart  of  France,  and  whose 
bones  will  mingle  with  the  stones  of  the  land 
they  invaded.  They  invented  cabalistic  words, 
and  offered  them  as  fetiches  to  a  fetich-loving 
nation.  Ask  any  German  with  an  ordinary 
education  for  the  reason  of  this  war,  and  he 
will  answer  'die  Zukunft,'  as  the  ignorant 
soldier,  turning  his  gray  cap  in  his  hands, 


228  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

will  say  'der  Kaiser/  There  are  also  certain 
words  to  which  they  have  given  a  force  that 
is  almost  dynamic,  by  dressing  them  up  with 
the  prestige  of  religion.  They  say  'it  is  the 
word  of  Redemption,  the  "Losungs-Wort."' 
It  is  all  very  well  for  them  to  tell  us  that 
'theories  are  gray,  and  life  a  green  tree';  they 
have  stuffed  themselves  with  gray  theories, 
and  it  is  here  that  the  green  tree  will  be 
planted. 

"They  have  a  great  many  ideas,  most  of 
them  false;  they  have  a  great  deal  of  religion, 
but  it  has  been  perverted.  Never  have  there 
been  so  many  arguments  as  to  the  advisa- 
bility of  putting  more  fertilizers  around  the 
green  tree,  never  has  there  been  so  much  cal- 
culation, ending  in  a  hopeless  tangle  of  figures, 
never  has  so  much  dogmatism  made  so  many 
sophistries.  They  confess  it  when  they  speak 
of  'those  delusions  of  life  of  which  men  can- 
not be  deprived  without  depriving  them  also 
of  life  itself.'  I  have  heard  them  say  'Truth  is 
not  in  the  light  which  illumines,  but  in  the 
eye  which  sees' — and  then  they  look  through 
a  glass  which  distorts  everything;  they  have 
opticians  who  make  the  spectacles  that  you 
may  behold  on  the  noses  of  German  soldiers. 
*  Excelsior  Gedanke' — ^they  invoke  the  super- 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  229 

human  thought  of  their  superman,  who  calls 
upon  them  all  the  time  to  grow,  as  if  they 
were  some  monster  which  would  never  stop. 
And  in  order  to  'grow,'  they  hatch  and  turn 
out  troops  by  the  million,  as  much  alike  as  a 
regiment  of  tin  soldiers.  They  have  taught 
falsehoods  *  useful  to  life,'  and  they  have  said: 
'We  have  reorganized  the  blind  forces  of 
nature;  now  it  is  for  us  to  wield  the  thunder 
that  will  shake  the  world.'" 


It  was  late  when  we  got  back  to  Compiegne. 
The  night  was  mild,  with  many  stars,  and 
the  moonlight  lingered  on  the  ruined  land- 
scape. We  drove  slowly,  for  fear  of  running 
into  fallen  trees,  until  at  last  we  found  our- 
selves again  in  the  forest  of  Ourscamp,  a  liv- 
ing forest,  with  the  wind  rustling  in  its  oaks 
and  beeches,  with  delicate  odors  from  its 
damp  earth,  and  the  throng  of  its  tree-trunks 
still  dimly  to  be  seen  in  the  shadows,  upright, 
orderly,  and  numerous  as  armies.  Armies  .  .  . 
the  word  is  ever  in  one's  mind. 


Two  days  later  we  stood  on  the  deck  of  an 
ocean  liner  at  Havre — the  Espagne,  Hoover 


230  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

was  sailing  for  the  United  States;  sovereign 
over  wheat  in  his  great  repubhc,  he  was  going 
to  take  possession  of  his  kingdom.  Two  of  his 
young  delegates  were  going  with  him;  others 
were  beginning  to  organize  the  services  of  the 
American  Red  Cross,  while  others  again  were 
preparing  to  incorporate  themselves  into  the 
first  small  nucleus  of  officers  and  men  around 
whom  the  American  army  would  gather. 

It  was  some  weeks  since  Mrs.  Vernon  had 
left  us,  and  we  were  beginning  to  receive  her 
first  letters.  What  a  born  missionary  she  was  ! 
Even  we  ourselves,  children  of  France  though 
we  were,  felt  that  she  was  urging  us  to  greater 
effort. 

"France  is  the  soul  of  the  world,"  she  said. 
"Write  to  us,  let  us  hear  your  voices;  we  are 
like  Saint  Thomas,  we  must  see  and  feel  as 
well  as  believe.  Send  us  something  of  your 
true  soul,  of  the  fire  whose  sparks  are  in  your 
soldiers  and  your  peasants,  and  hidden  on  the 
hearths  of  your  homes.  It  is  from  your  torch 
that  the  mighty  flame  must  be  kindled  which 
will  sweep  over  all  our  land." 

So  the  little  group  was  to  be  scattered,  to 
undertake  new  tasks.  We  had  come  to  say 
farewell,  and  as  he  walked  up  and  down  the 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  231 

ship's  deck  Hoover  spread  before  us  a  com- 
prehensive view  of  what  might  be  expected 
from  the  effort  of  the  United  States. 

Although  this  modern  Moses  had  already 
demanded,  obtained,  and  distributed  manna 
to  the  people  during  a  time  of  sore  trial,  I 
confess  that  we  were  still  somewhat  incased 
in  incredulity,  like  the  Hebrews  of  old. 

"You  are  mistaken,"  said  Hoover  (and  he 
showed  his  impatient  faith  by  walking  faster). 
"I  assure  you  that  it  will  not  be  long.  The 
movement  which  is  now  taking  place  among 
our  people  belongs  to  the  order  of  moral  and 
religious  phenomena,  the  action  of  which,  as 
you  know,  is  instantaneous.  Under  other  cir- 
cumstances, how  shall  I  express  it  ^  We  should 
have  had  to  go  through  a  rotation  of  feelings 
before  throwing  our  armies  into  Europe;  we 
should  have  had  to  drag  our  men  away  from 
their  settled  faith  in  peace  and  accustom 
them  gradually  to  the  idea  of  war.  You  know 
it  is  one  of  your  old  writers  who  has  said 
'Peace  fills  the  mouth  with  honey.'  But  now 
an  alarm  has  been  given  in  the  United  States 
which  has  aroused  our  national  conscience. 
Love  for  France  has  become  a  vital  force  in 
millions  of  brave  young  hearts. 


232  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  C.  R.  B. 

"An  intolerable  wrong  is  being  committed 
in  the  world,  and  we  cannot  allow  it. 

"It  is  true  that  we  have  neither  the  tradi- 
tions nor  the  habits  of  a  military  nation;  we 
shall  not  feel  the  war  in  our  body  and  our 
blood,  but  we  shall  feel  it  in  our  souls,  and 
our  action  will  be  all  the  more  rapid. 

"We  have  no  warlike  traditions  nor  habits," 
he  repeated,  and  he  added  with  one  of  his 
quick,  thoughtful  smiles:  "I  know  you  are 
thinking  that,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
have  none  of  the  old  wheels  which  turn  on 
themselves  without  going  on.  We  shall  profit 
by  the  lessons  and  also  by  the  faults  of  every 
one  .  .  .  yes,  of  every  one,  and  on  the  whole 
we  shall  turn  out  something  new — something 
new  founded  on  old  methods,  as  we  did  in 
our  beginning." 

He  went  back  over  what  he  had  seen  in  the 
course  of  the  war,  and  spoke  of  men  whom  he 
had  known  in  Belgium  and  France,  speaking 
of  them  with  deep  feeling.  Some  were  hidden 
in  jails  or  prison-camps,  some  had  been  shot 
to  death  as  "traitors,"  because  even  in  their 
agony  they  had  been  true  to  their  country, 
and  he  added  in  a  low  voice,  as  if  speaking  to 
himself: 


WITH  OUR  FRIENDS  233 

"This  war  has  become  a  religion,  for  it  has 
had  its  martyrs." 

A  bell  rang;  it  was  the  signal  for  us  who 
were  not  sailing  to  leave  the  ship. 

Two  hours  later  we  stood  on  the  heights 
of  Sainte  Adresse  and  watched  the  steamer 
as  she  went  down  the  channel,  until  the  smoke 
from  her  funnels  had  faded  against  the  sky. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

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